Saturday, August 9, 2008

The road ahead is clear, Life is Good... Now Repeat After Me: I am Free!

This is not a retraction, nor is it a justification about my previous post. I would instead like to say that unlike most of my other posts the previous is based purely on an emotional basis.

I'm not saying I'm wrong nor as I saying that I was right but I will accept that my last post did not reflect reality accurately. Why is this? Well it was based on memories that I had of my school days and while it was not 100% accurate some of it is true. Furthermore I'd like to say that it was the way I felt.

Now good friend Skull Z made an interesting comment about how culture shock is based on how the individual perceives their environment. That's very true and in that case I couldn't really get past the superficial differences that existed.

So your perception of your environment can affect how things are? Yes very true. So if you perceive things negatively then you're going to see a lot of things as bad. Ok. On the flipside if you see everything as positive then you're going to see a lot of things as good. The second sounds a lot better for sure.

But then take this case. There are some people out there or at least in the past who may have seen being in the position as a servant to a respectable family or individual as being the penultimate objective to them. From their minds, probably due to caste or social status they could not rise beyond that and from their viewpoint, there could be nothing better.

To put a more solid context, perhaps during the colonial days of Sri Lanka, a good position would be been to directly attending to the needs of an Englishman or family. Maybe if I was there in that time that could have been my mentality too. But is this a good thing? Looking at it today I can firmly say no, but to the people living at that time it may well have been the case.

Similarly who knows what things today that we perceive as being good will no longer be perceived that way? We can laugh at the way women were treated in many ancient societies because its mostly no longer like that, or even the idea of slavery. But in the future people may well be laughing at many of the things we hold dear and sacred.

So to finish off I would like to say that maybe my last post didn't reflect reality entirely. My emotions would have clouded my perception. But at the same time we might see things as overly positive in a similar manner (I'm not referring to my last post here - though I stand by it as a signpost of emotion and perception).

I suppose the matter that I'm touching on here is inevitably perception. But when you really dig down in to the matter it ends up with that question asked in the movie "The Matrix"... "What is real?"

Carrying on with that theme... that movie ended on such a strong note with it's final lines.

"I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible"

And lastly I'd like to leave you with this picture that is a piece of Graffiti found on a wall in Bristol, England:

4 comments:

  1. yeah, what IS real? but reality can mean a lot of things to different people. to put it in the context of your question 'what is real?' for example, things put in an emotional and perceptual context could seem more real than other ways of putting things. from a ceratin viewpoint.it is just the dictated norm to be detached and scientific.

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  2. speaking, of course in the context of your school. where you really cant get scientific and detached and analyze it effectively. because we can only use a limited bit of actual science there. we could just as well rely on your emotional feedback. taken in full context of your situation of course. ok think i used the word 'context' there waay too many times!

    peace..

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  3. hate to disagree with u mate but.. i really dnt get what you said about the circumstances dictating our freedom...and it dont think that i wld think that a good life would be looking after a Brit and his family for me it would probably be fighting them for the sake of regaining freedom...

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  4. Well bawa..i dont think he meant something like that..what he elaborated was that the way one perceives his environment heavily influence his perception. its evident any where, common to anybody though how he perceives it can differ, you may have wanted to fight against the Brits, but some would have preferred working under them....it seems that you have missed the point here..

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