Choices we have
I was watching Matrix, Reloaded. It was quite a movie, definitely a good one in Sci-Fi genre, because it's one of few movies that could drag me to the theatre; I don't like most Sci-Fi movies. There were some lines about choice in the movie said by the architect of the Matrix, the guy with white beard and the look of a wizard on his face (I don't know why but he reminded me Sigmund Freud). I don't remember the exact words, I am just paraphrasing one of them: "The bad thing is that we have the choice." I don't know if it's true or not. I mean I don't know if we do have choice at all. We don't get to choose between life and the quick wrap up death in a tissue when we are in the form of a sperm. We don't get to choose our race, our gender, our nationality, our first language (which is the ground basis for our personality almost for our life time), we don't get to choose our family. We don't get to choose stay innocent like a child, we have to grow up, otherwise we will be called retarded. We don't get to choose our politicians while we are minors, we can't even choose not to be or to be a minor. We don't get to choose not to live even if we live in a hell because life is a must to do, no question on that base on all social norms and even abnorms, and finally we don't get to choose stay alive as long as we want. So do we have choice or not?
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Monday, May 05, 2003
Virtual voices
I've been participating in a group project called Virtual narrators. It is a kind of polyphonic ensemble. We all virtual narrators write in Farsi and the goal is to write a novel without a linear direction of a story or any direction or story at all. There is no rule how to write or what to write; something between democracy and anarchy. I am Iranian, born in a country full of dictatorship in its past and present. I live in abroad, but most of the participants of this project live in Iran. They write whatever they desire or whatever they think they should, having the fact that they live under a permanent shadow of fear. Recently, the young weblogger and journalist Sina Motallebi has been arrested and been in custody ever since, just because he was writing his weblog freely and he might have crossed some lines. Lines that you can't find them in law books. These lines are invisible to people. That's why writers, artists and activists never know when they are crossing a line and when they are going to be punished. Despite this uncertainty of law, people, specially young ones take the risk and do what they want. They write weblogs freely, wear what they want, speak out, party, they make love; even though they know all of the above is forbidden or considered as sin. And I salute them.
I've been participating in a group project called Virtual narrators. It is a kind of polyphonic ensemble. We all virtual narrators write in Farsi and the goal is to write a novel without a linear direction of a story or any direction or story at all. There is no rule how to write or what to write; something between democracy and anarchy. I am Iranian, born in a country full of dictatorship in its past and present. I live in abroad, but most of the participants of this project live in Iran. They write whatever they desire or whatever they think they should, having the fact that they live under a permanent shadow of fear. Recently, the young weblogger and journalist Sina Motallebi has been arrested and been in custody ever since, just because he was writing his weblog freely and he might have crossed some lines. Lines that you can't find them in law books. These lines are invisible to people. That's why writers, artists and activists never know when they are crossing a line and when they are going to be punished. Despite this uncertainty of law, people, specially young ones take the risk and do what they want. They write weblogs freely, wear what they want, speak out, party, they make love; even though they know all of the above is forbidden or considered as sin. And I salute them.
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