Friday, March 24, 2006
Jambo Bwana*
One revealing and interesting segment of BBC news this morning showed what some representatives of Israeli people think should be the map of Israel…when asked to draw what he thinks a map of Israel should be a jewish settler not surprisingly drew a map to cover the whole of the west bank to be included inside Israel. When a young man from tel aviv was asked the same , he was more liberal and sympathetic to his Palestinian neighbours and drew a map minus the west bank and gaza strip BUT included the Golan heights and Jerusalem….while another man simply made a simple oval line to include everything and also several hundred kilometers of land outside current Israeli borders and occupied territories for good measure….all these and we are all vilifying HAMAS for wanting to kick out Israel into the sea??….
This is totally understandable because whatever we say, we humans are just another species of animals (some say of higher evolutionary ladder but I seriously doubt this…) and have violent territorial behavior worse than cats dogs and monkeys…nobody should be apologetic about this because we ALL are territorial, it’s in our genes…nobody wants his space to be invaded…if you think hamas or the Israelis or my hero of the day…Iranian president ahmedinejad wanting israel to be wiped out of the face of the earth are showing bad behavior, try digging a couple of flowers from your neighbour’s garden and see his response eh?….and in reality for all the heroic wars and conquests of the world history and constant redrawing of the world maps, this is nothing more than digging a few plants from your neighbour’s and getting away with it….
And another unpleasant fact of human behavior is that we are all racists…fortunately most of us are reasonable enough to be able to mask it most of the time…but in the bigger scheme of things whatever we do…racist undertones are never far from the surface…and territoriality and racism when mixed together gives explosive results… don’t need to look far… every country on the face of the earth have some form of racial problems or other….problems of immigrations, prejudice and so on…
The only way all this can be overcome surprisingly comes from warren beatty!!! A great womanizer but one not known for good acting… but he once said a very good thing… can’t remember exactly the quote but the gist is ; the only way we can rid the world of racism is for us to continue fucking each other until we all come to the same color...how true!...
But in literature mild racism can be very affecting…I’m currently (still) reading evelyn waugh’s travelogue “remote people” and his gentle digs at everybody who weren’t white and british is quite comical…some gems…
….no sound made by mankind is quite so painful as the voices of two arab women at variance….
..Even Indians , a race renowned for dishonour and instability….
…as the malays are prone to periodical fits of homicidal mania….
But it’s hard to get angry with this writer whose wry (and dry) humor is very err humorous…another example from ‘remote people’…I tease him by putting on an earnest manner and asking him for information which I know he will be unable to give me….
if he is still alive (which of course he’s not) he is one person I’d love be friend with…
* excerpt from “remote people” by evelyn waugh
…groups of Kikuyu, the women with heavy luggage on their backs supported by a strap round their foreheads; their ears are slit and ornamented; their clothes of copper coloured skins; the men have mostly made some effort at European dress in the form of discarded khaki shorts or an old hat. They attempted a clumsy kind of salute as we pass, smiling and saying ‘Jambo Bwana’…..
This is totally understandable because whatever we say, we humans are just another species of animals (some say of higher evolutionary ladder but I seriously doubt this…) and have violent territorial behavior worse than cats dogs and monkeys…nobody should be apologetic about this because we ALL are territorial, it’s in our genes…nobody wants his space to be invaded…if you think hamas or the Israelis or my hero of the day…Iranian president ahmedinejad wanting israel to be wiped out of the face of the earth are showing bad behavior, try digging a couple of flowers from your neighbour’s garden and see his response eh?….and in reality for all the heroic wars and conquests of the world history and constant redrawing of the world maps, this is nothing more than digging a few plants from your neighbour’s and getting away with it….
And another unpleasant fact of human behavior is that we are all racists…fortunately most of us are reasonable enough to be able to mask it most of the time…but in the bigger scheme of things whatever we do…racist undertones are never far from the surface…and territoriality and racism when mixed together gives explosive results… don’t need to look far… every country on the face of the earth have some form of racial problems or other….problems of immigrations, prejudice and so on…
The only way all this can be overcome surprisingly comes from warren beatty!!! A great womanizer but one not known for good acting… but he once said a very good thing… can’t remember exactly the quote but the gist is ; the only way we can rid the world of racism is for us to continue fucking each other until we all come to the same color...how true!...
But in literature mild racism can be very affecting…I’m currently (still) reading evelyn waugh’s travelogue “remote people” and his gentle digs at everybody who weren’t white and british is quite comical…some gems…
….no sound made by mankind is quite so painful as the voices of two arab women at variance….
..Even Indians , a race renowned for dishonour and instability….
…as the malays are prone to periodical fits of homicidal mania….
But it’s hard to get angry with this writer whose wry (and dry) humor is very err humorous…another example from ‘remote people’…I tease him by putting on an earnest manner and asking him for information which I know he will be unable to give me….
if he is still alive (which of course he’s not) he is one person I’d love be friend with…
* excerpt from “remote people” by evelyn waugh
…groups of Kikuyu, the women with heavy luggage on their backs supported by a strap round their foreheads; their ears are slit and ornamented; their clothes of copper coloured skins; the men have mostly made some effort at European dress in the form of discarded khaki shorts or an old hat. They attempted a clumsy kind of salute as we pass, smiling and saying ‘Jambo Bwana’…..
