Down.

[sister_luck]

I'm sitting here and pondering what I want to write about in this post.


The world cup is over and I'm stunned that men seem to be incapable of growing up and still stick to the idea that you counter insults with violence. I've had to do the talk with various opponents, but they weren't overpaid football players, but red-faced sniffling boys who lashed out after hearing once too often that their mother is a slut, their sister a whore or some such nonsense. Usually it emerges that they themselves said very much the same things to the other boy. And yes, nipple-pinching is another one of their favourite tactics. Makes it all the easier for the line to blur between victim and villain. 'He provoked me' is not a valid excuse.

It's very humid here which makes breathing difficult and I can feel a headache coming on. In line with the weather things seem rather oppressive at the moment.

There are the bombs in Mumbai which of course don't make the headlines quite in the same way as the London bombings a year ago did. It makes the inner cynic in me bristle with sarcastic remarks about how we Western civilized people only care if we're directly affected. Bombings in Bali? Tsunami? Yep, lots of tourists caught up in it. Earthquake in Pakistan? Why, where is that again? Or maybe we're becoming fatigued with all the carnage and news of bombings - the bloodshed in Iraq with carbombs and shootings every day certainly has become some sort of background din that we are faintly aware of but we don't get outraged about it anymore. I teach several Iraqi refugees and one of them went to Syria this summer with her family where they're going to meet up with the girl's ailing grandparents. The grandparents still live in Baghdad and they were making the dangerous journey to Syria for what's probably their last meeting with their daughter and her family. I hope it all went well.


Yesterday, I watched a depressing film, Young Adam, starring Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton. It's set in a very drab 1950s Scotland and even though the characters get to have some sex, it all seems very desperate and joyless. The truth never comes out, no one manages to change and everyone is horribly stuck. It had beautiful photography though and was one of those slow and sad films that stay with you for a while.

Comments

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

I do think that our western societies are a bit regressing after being quite tamed during the XIXth century. We talk a lot about the lack of social linkage these days, but rather than a lack, I think the everyday social relations have become more violent, more brutal since the end of the 20th Century. As teachers we are the first witnesses of that evolution.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Well, I think that the horrors of the first half of the XIXth century and the stalemate of the Cold War in a way papered over the cracks. There was some sort of stability in our lives and people craved that stability which in itself was of course a bit of an illusion, but at least in Western societies you knew where you stood, you knew that if the bomb didn't kill you first that your life would be lived within a well-structured society.

Nowadays everything is much more precarious - isn't that the new buzzword for the current generation?

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

I suppose you meant the horrors of the first half of the XXth century.
I think the two World Wars were so traumatizing, not only because they were complete and destructive thanks to technology, but also precisely because the societies had become more "civilized" than they used to be in the past. There weren't only well-structured, they were tamed, polished which wasn't the case, lets' say, in the XVIIIth Century (people kept hitting on each other all the time in the streets and for nothing).

I'm watching the news and they say that many youth workers are quite embarrassed by Zidane's behaviour because he's supposed to be a role model...In a way he mirrored our society, he just did what many teenagers do all the time these days, and even adults more and more.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Ooops! Honestly, I know how centuries are numbered! *shame-faced* How the hell did that happen? Must blame it on the Roman numerals, but that doesn't work because I know them, too.

Sometimes, I get quite pessimistic about human nature. All this talk of progress and civilizations - and both usually happen at the expense of others who are exploited for the gain of those so-called civilized societies - and underneath it all we're still cavemen clubbing eather other over the head though with much better weapons.

On the other hand, there are the very ideals of democracy and human rights which at least let us see that clubbing someone over the head is wrong and that we have the civic duty to discourage it.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Yes ideals still matters but they don't prevent things to happen.
They can even be used as poor excuses to control and dominate. And then the nastiest things ensue. Remember the colonization and how the ideals of "civilizing mission" actually led to scorn human rights.

See what is still happening in Chechnya, see how worse the situation is getting in Iraq...the opposite of a constitutional State.

*sigh*

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

I see you're leaning towards the pessimistic outlook, too.

*sigh* indeed

It feels like I should re-read Heart of Darkness.