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I dreamed that we were all at a big pool party and Dr. Chuck Tingle jumped in and HIS MASK CAME OFF I immediately averted my eyes but i could not stop myself returning to the memory of his faded pink Guy Fieri hair.
I told my friend about this dream and they said "maybe Chuck Tingle is Guy Fieri." Chuck Tingle is not Guy Fieri, Chuck Tingle is Dr. Chuck Tingle, but at the same time, maybe we're all a little Guy Fieri. If we're lucky.
A bit of rambling...
Maybe it’s the Lit Major in me, but I periodically look at the media I consume - music, television (though right now, that’s literally unplugged), books, social media, games - and look at how it impacts the world around it. The very best of our literature, regardless of medium, makes us think, makes us talk. Sometimes it is beautiful. Sometimes, it is damned uncomfortable. And it needs to be both. That truth should resonate deeply inside us, all of us. Our media should tackle the social, religious, political, etc., issues of today in a way that encourages people to think about the ideas abstractly and then, hopefully, apply that thought to reality. Because all of it is a reflection of our world.
You’ll see I often use the tags #truth in media and #truth in gaming. If I don’t have a #truth in fiction, I should. Generally speaking, you see this most prominently in science fiction, but it’s just as easy to see in fantasy - magic is just sufficiently evolved science and vice versa, after all. You definitely see it regarding to the early years of Star Trek TOS. So much of that series was a deliberate retelling of the current world around it - it was showing viewers so many of the things that were happening, just through a different lens - a diffuse lens that allowed people a viewpoint removed from their own. It took the immediacy and the knee-jerk reaction from the situation and presented it in a way to let people look and think and respond. The situations were the same - identical in scope of the event itself, but the players, the presentation, that’s what differed. Science fiction broadens minds. Or at least, we hope it does.
Dystopian literature, on the other hand, is created as a warning of what happens when society as a whole disregards the warnings of the world at large. It shows what happens when extremism comes into play and how that works. The goal here is to say, if we don’t change our views or actions, if we continue down this path, this is what awaits us. And we can see it happening all around us. We see the paths becoming more and more clear as novels we considered dystopian nightmare are becoming far too eerily accurate.
So what does this tell us? Everything we create is both a reflection of what we are and a desire of what we want. Every reaction we have to these things is honest. We have untold numbers of novels and movies that show fear of advanced technology and how it can root us in place - we’re so interconnected with tech that we lose how to connect with humanity or surveillance is everywhere and there is no escape or it will consume us to the point that we are nothing but a slave to it. And there is validity in all of that. Sure, some of those stories are extreme views (depending on what you’re reading/viewing), but our reactions show us so much about how the potential of that actually happening impacts us.
All our stories are the same...there are no new stories, just new ways to tell them. And our history continues to repeat itself as well. We tell tales of heroes and villains. We tell tales of epic quests and of the smallest actions having the greatest repercussions. If literature can inspire you to greatness, it can inspire you to darkness as well. It’s why propaganda is so insidious. It’s why advertising and lobbying are billion-dollar industries. Sell it, sell the story, sell the perspective, sell the lie, sell the truth.
Communication - written and verbal - has been used since the dawn of humanity to influence. We do it all the time. What we consume consumes us, changes us, reveals us. Are we good people? Are we only good in certain circumstances? Are we okay with X action in Y circumstance, but not in Z circumstance? When is X action okay? When is murder not murder, but self-defense? When is imprisonment just and when is it not? When is it okay to withhold medications and healthcare? The list is endless. And it’s terrifying.
And when you see those warning signs, when you see the parallels and you fear the direction in which everything is headed? How can you not say no more? So yes, you better believe when I see it reflected in literature and people saying, hey, those are good things, I’m going to be pissed. Cause that’s an honest reaction to a very real situation presented just this side of reality. It takes very little for just-this-side-of-reality to sidestep into our reality. We once believed so many of our novels and movies and whatnot would never come to pass. We were too smart for that, too moral, too good. We saw the inherent danger and we could avoid it.
Except we’re already living so many of them. How can I not be afraid when people look at a situation and say, “Hey, that’s fine!” when that situation is a direct parallel to something in my life? I have every right to fear for myself and my loved ones.
And I do.
Psyche of the Indian crab! Stop behaving like cattle with passports! There is extreme mutual-distrust and apathy among Indians. This attitude towards each other has been exploited earlier by foreign powers but since independence by domestic powers (divide-and-rule). This holds us back from growing together as a nation. I realised this in my teens, so my entire teen-life till date I have sought and thought about the causality. Three decades later, my understanding is: extreme mutual-distrust and apathy among Indians is the result of 1000+ years of hard-wiring into the Indian psyche. Created by the inconsiderate and apathetic rulers who generation after generation subjected Indians to - slavery, monarchy, demonarchy (post 1947). As the most powerful instituion in our lives showed no mercy and still does not treat us with empathy and care. The conditioning has made us lose love and respect for our own countrymen above all else. Long have we lived in the illusion that we have breathed and survived within this ruthless apathetic system. Invisible to its effects and deep impact. Revealing itself as we are today the world’s largest diaspora (only next to China, this says a lot since we know that ruthless system they stand for). While countrymen and country-cousins alike suffer the extreme mutual-distrust and apathy, the government due to its self-awarded power remains above such apathetic treatment by Indian citizens. Mainly due to the fear and control systems . The day Indian's citizens realise that governance has to be transparent and accountable, only that day we will stop being treated like tax-paying and FMCG and e-commerce consuming cattle with passports. Maybe that day, we will all begin our journey to stop treating each other like animals, rather as empathic humans.
vikram sood
Any person can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43)
It's 2016AD, we humans still react to life situations like cave dwellers. We forget technology can't change that in a few 100 years.
vikram sood
That post where I detail all my goals for this blog and admit that it’s like the 27th blog I’ve started
Welp, now that that’s out of the way... Let’s talk about me. Me, me, me.
I honestly don’t think that this blog can serve a specific purpose for me. I’ve already got my general blog, where I post all the things I think look cool. I’ve already got an opinion blog (which I actually want to keep doing, and which I need to turn back into an opinion blog and not just where I dump all my personal shit). I’ve already got some topical blogs, and this definitely can’t be one of those... so I don’t know what it is. When do I post to this thing? I’ll be honest, I really just liked the word “aspirant” and would’ve made my URL theaspirant.tumblr.com, but some idiot who doesn’t even use that wonderful URL took it. So I just turned “the aspirant” into “l’aspirante” for my love of the Italian language.
Maaaaybe this blog could be about human truths. What we think, how we present ourselves, what we think of others, etc. I could post my musings here, with each definite truth as its own separate post (short and sweet or elaborated upon, depending on whatever it would be). Yeah, that sounds good. Let’s go.
Over the Hedge is the best movie E V E R coz it has like family value, adult jokes, it reaveals human truths HUMAN TRUTHS, fucking puns and this scene ISWEAR RJ THE RACOON FUCKING OPENS A CHIP AND IT FUCKING EXPLODES WITH ULTRA DELICIOUSNESS god if you've haven't watched over the hedge you should see it ohmygod and the songs are kinda awesome too
