The Cat

She was licking
the open tin
for hours and hours
without realising
that she was drinking
her own blood.

Spyros Kyriazopoulos

Love in the time of Internet

Last week I finished reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'Love in the Time of Cholera'. It was easily one of the best woven stories I have ever read, the language delicately stimulated all the senses, something I rarely experience in a novel.

It wasn't just this that kept me riveted to the book all day and night for those 2 days. I even read about Fermina Daza and Dr.Urbino during my lectures, unfortunately giving people the impression that I was telepathically filtering in lecture content whilst reading a novel.

What caught my attention most in the story was inter-gender interaction and Love. The tale is set in times where the telegram was first starting to get popular, somewhere in the Caribbean.

A boy falls in love with a girl. This in itself is an understatement. I won't attempt to describe how he felt about this girl, but the mere thought of her tormented him for months. In order to make his intentions clear he has a number of obstacles and limitations to face. The only methods of communication available to him are either by directly speaking to her, or by letter which he has to deliver by hand or by proxy.

Speaking face to face was completely out of the question. The girl always had her Aunt by her side as a guardian. This meant no boy could approach the girl and harass her. Direct contact with potential spouses was frowned upon. He had to maintain his integrity.

He could've secretly delivered a letter to her of his intentions. This was risky, for if the girl was brought up to be a 'modest' and a girl of 'integrity' she would not accept a man who could exhibit such behaviour.

So the boy chooses to do it the legitimate way. After months of waiting for the opportune moment, he goes up to the girl and her guardian Aunt with a letter which took him uncountable number of hours to pen. He asks the girl in front of this guardian if she would grant him the permission of commencing a correspondence with her. The girl responds by saying she needs permission from her dad, and that when she gets that permission, he will know by an obvious sign.

It takes months of daily observation before that sign is made, and he proceeds to deliver the letter proclaiming his love. It takes her months to reply. This correspondence continues for four years without them actually meeting face to face. They are deeply in love with each other.

What struck me about this was how, each and every single step was crucial, significant and determinant of the history of their relationship. Each and every step had to be ratified by codes of honour, modesty and integrity. Each and every step meant something humongous. It took a good year before the boy first made contact with the girl. That whole year was spent in preparation for that one meeting. The girl spent that year waiting for him to make a move, observing him observing her from a distance. The Aunt spent that year as an independent adjudicator.

Each and every single letter delivered was crafted to perfection, and was received with starving eyes. The letters received would, after being read and re-read, be kept safe as talismans of their relationship.

Today we are not in the time of Cholera. We have been graced by the progress in communication.

Today a boy falls in love with a girl. This happens after meeting her at an event somewhere. He adds her on Facebook the next day and she accepts as anyone else would. In less than a week they are Wall-Walling like they were talking in real-time. The introduction of Facebook Chat makes communication even easier and private but it isn't good enough. In less than a month they are depleting their mobile phone contracts on each other and this has all happened without any expression of Love. It's all under the banner of friendship.

This continues for ages. The boy can't tell the girl he likes her because he believes she doesn't like him back and that she sees him only as a friend. The girl can't tell the boy that she likes him for the same reason, but also because this is frowned upon. The only obstacle to their mutual love...is their virtual, mutual friendship.

The guy one day has the guts to go for it and he proposes and they eventually elope.

This is Love in the Time of Internet. Gone are the sacred codes of integrity and modesty. Gone is the significance of each and every step taken in a relationship. A couple can reach the stage where they're on the phone to each other, and they won't even know how it reached that stage so quickly.

What once used to be an invisible wall between the genders has now been shattered. The barrier was constructed on the codes of integrity and modesty, and only with those two qualities could it be crossed. In today's world of Facebook, BBM and MSN Messenger that wall is gone.

The world has changed drastically, and with it the perceptions of modesty and integrity. It is now acceptable to speak to the opposite gender and form a relationship with them. My grievance is that this is being done with complete disregard to any definition of modesty and integrity.

I am talking about love here as opposed to friendship, which is an entirely different matter, although I still believe that in itself requires modesty.

All I wish for is that in the formation of a relationship between two people, that each step taken have great importance and meaning, unlike the meaningless fast-track that relationships seem to be taking these days. There is still room for modesty and integrity in modern communication.

Maybe, with them integrated, man will once more cherish his relationships.

In Pursuit of Happiness

Mankind’s ultimate aim is happiness. I can only think that in their eagerness to achieve this myth, early humans stipulated that ‘progress’ was the answer. So convinced by this, man fell into a vicious cycle of progressing in the name of progress. 

The result of this horrendous enterprise has indeed been progress. We have become a proud species, emulating Orwell’s pigs in a ludicrous belief that our evolutionary path has placed us above all other Earthlings. We laugh and point at the chimps through our safari SUV windows, and we eternally damn the poverty stricken safari driver as ‘developing’. We have progressed so much that we classify humans according to how progressed they are, pigeon-holing entire continents according to the demographic transition model.

Take a step back and look at fellow man today. Is he happy?

Man today has all the ingredients of “happiness”. He has money, a house, a car and a smartphone. He has friends and “friends”. He has the best medical care and food.

Yet he remains unhappy. He wants more Facebook friends and wants his BBM to ring more often. He wants a faster car and a bigger house. He wishes his spouse wasn’t such a whinge and is annoyed he has developed urinary incontinence at the age of 90.

All progress has done for mankind is cause unhappiness. With the advent of progress, the basal emotion of ‘satisfaction’ was obliterated. You can’t be satisfied in the face of progress; all you want is more and more of it. I envy the chimps we so patronise because they know what satisfaction really feels like.

Leo Tolstoy is a man who understood what happiness really is. Here is a quote from his novella, Family Happiness: "I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbour--such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps--what can more the heart of man desire?"

Tolstoy had an obvious reverence for solitude and privacy. It used to be that Man’s only true possessions were his body and privacy. The former has been removed by fellow Man and his Laws, the latter shamelessly sold by Man himself.

We now live in a world where it is encouraged and expected of somebody to tell the whole world through text that he hates Cheryl Cole’s X-Factor choice. A culture of voyeurism and consensual spying has taken the world by storm.

Gone were the days where you judged fellow man on your actual meetings with them. Gone were the days where ‘friend’ meant someone you could rely on and whom you interacted mostly in real-time. All we have now is a debacle of an online theatre. The acting is frankly terrible. Friends post to each other carefully crafted, excited and pointless messages. Some ‘friends’ have never even seen each other and rely wholly on virtual, non-representative dialogue to keep their friendship ‘strong’. We live in a society where acquaintances are informed about your life just as much as your friends are. 

What Tolstoy also envisages is freedom. As much as modern man prides himself on his Freedom, he remains oblivious to the fact he is a slave. He is a slave to progress. He slaves away in his job with the hope it will gift him progress and a better life. He doesn’t own the land he himself ploughs and can’t even renovate his own ‘property’ without permission.

There was once a time where man was satisfied. God’s land was free and not under any ownership; his shelter was of his own free choice. His food was of his own toil and his friends were the people he cared most for and whom he lived with. He was satisfied even against the hunger, cold and dangers his life faced. Man was benevolent and helped fellow man. He lived life as it came to him, and reaped what was sown. This man was satisfied, and he was happy as he knew not of a better life. Then the Wheel came along and with it progress. It was the spark which lit the eternal flame.

This man was the Cave-man.

I envy the Cave-man and his Tolstoyan happiness.

Who Am I?

You’re sitting in the park, waiting for your best-friend. A man carefully walks up to you, sits down beside you. With his eyes carefully resting on yours he asks, “Who are you?”

The first thing that comes to mind is your name. A Forename-Surname combination which was chosen, assigned and immortalised without your consent. “That’s who I am!” says the little voice in your head.

“Is it really?” comes the reply.

If my name really defined who I was, then how are people who share my name defined? I’m definitely not the same as Mohammed Latif of Falluja, Iraq for example. Besides, why should I be content with defining myself by a title I didn’t tailor myself? My parents gave me my name without knowing what kind of person I would be. It doesn’t matter though, if I did change my name it still doesn’t answer the question: Who am I?

So what is it that makes us unique? Each of us is unique in body. Our DNA should be a suitable definition. Everyone has a different DNA sequence that is responsible for either their big noses or their short stature. So “I am a product of my DNA” is a contender for the answer.

“Is it really?” comes the reply.

If DNA really defined who someone was, then how do identical twins answer the question? They can’t be defined as the same. DNA is also only responsible for the body, and not the soul. It’s like saying the cover of a book is more important than its contents. So I guess the answer lies somewhere with the soul.

We can’t really dwell on the soul as no-one has any ideas what it is. The answer to our question probably lies there. You can’t answer the man with just that though, so an alternative answer must be found.

Your best-friend arrives. The man turns around and asks them “Who is this person?” pointing at you. Your friend replies with ease, telling the man who you are. Apparently you are <insert name>, a friend who goes to the same university and studies the same course. You are soft-spoken but easily irritable and you like eating chocolate cake. You listen to heavy metal and when no one is looking, you play air guitar.

Upon hearing this, the man smiles at you and asks again, “Who are you?”

Why is it you have struggled to answer this question, yet your friend answered so easily? Why couldn’t you have just said the same thing and been rewarded with a smile? People talk about themselves and what they do all the time. The problem lies in objectivity. If someone asked you who you were, you wouldn’t tell them your sins or something you are ashamed of. Instead you would say you enjoy long walks on the beach and Mozart. This is something you see on internet dating websites and it rarely ends well. So that rules out you being able to describe yourself as a definition.

This can be fixed if we make the evaluation of who you are an objective and transparent operation. Just like your best-friend managed to define who you are, everyone else who knows you should be able to as well. You will receive both praise and criticism. Depending on whether you are a good or bad person, the balance will sway either way. If you know more people well you will then have a more accurate answer than if you were isolated and without community. Thus, it is actually the people around you who define who you are, not you!

What are the implications of this? Two things come out with this conclusion. The first is that your conduct in society is directly correlated to who you are. If you are a mass murderer then the general understanding of who you are will be pretty negative. The second is that without a society of some form around you, you will cease to exist. There will be no one available to define who you are. Without personal connections with fellow man, you will be a Nobody. It is like sitting on the bus, where no one knows you and considers you ‘Just another person’. On the bus, you are a nobody amongst nobodies.

Therefore it is critical that one is an active member of society, contributing positively in every possible way. After all, it is these contributions that will help shape who you are in society.

So how do you end up answering the man?

“I don’t know who I am but you may do”