Saturday, October 15, 2011

Why Mourn for Morons?

Gotta say writing a blog post without a lot of time at your disposal is a very hard task. Thats why I think I will limit myself to non-working weekends only. You were so right, Arpit. Goddamnit!

iWhy
Ever since Steve Jobs died, seems like he took away a lot of the world with him.[1]  Thats what the media seems to say these days. And almost half of the people I know too. And almost all the people in my generation. And...

You know what, this does not irritate me. Not at all. What fills me with rage is  the compassion we show for dead celebrity morons, when so many living people live the medieval life: nasty, brutish and short.[2] Not only this, watching so many people almost pray some living persons (Beckham, anybody?) makes this even more pitiful, cause I can't think of a more miserable word right now.

Have some more
Remember Michael Jackson. Yes, that Michael Jackson. ....it don't matter if you're black or white; ...... All I wanna say is that they don't really care about us; ..... The dude was a great artist. Sure. But he was *not* a very good human being[3]. That person's actions introduced the word 'paedophile' to me. People actually cried at his death, notwithstanding the fact that there are folks in the Third World who are not dying, just waiting for death for I-don't-know-how-long.[4]

Remember Tiger Woods? Boris Becker? Hillary Clinton's husband/Monica Lewinsky's boyfriend?

Closer to home, I remember a friend Abhinav[5] telling me he once saw the great (still alive) Mr. Amitabh Bacchan (never mind the spelling) appearing in a talk show. Nothing exceptional, except the agenda for the talk: Human Rights! I mean, what the **** does he know about human rights? Are the channel guys not idiots for calling him and broadcasting the show? Are we not even bigger idiots for watching the show? [6]

A great take on the topic of following what the world tells you (though from a different viewpoint) is from TheBluntBlogger: they have enough sheep out there, be human for once and stand for what you believe in.

The world has more important things to worry about
Believe me. It has. What did iPhones do for the poor and starving millions?[7] Since when was Michael Jackson a great person (artist: yes, person: I don't know)?

Since when did the fourth estate get on to promoting such things? I remember watching the details of a day's working in the (Indian) Parliament only during the recent Civil Society's (Anna Hazare etc.) protests for the Jan Lokpal, after at least a solid two years.

Maybe its another facet of the Human Condition.[8] We ignore things that seem unpleasant, no matter how important they may be. But as individuals, it is our duty to not believe what is being told or done, and investigate for ourselves. I know it is mine. And I've never been comfortable adoring a celebrity. Mr. Toor, remember my views on Sachin Tendulkar?


[1] Sorry for not using an upper case 'H' with him, Steve-fans.
[2] I read it somewhere. If you have seen movies depicting that time, or read (fiction or not) books/novels, you can relate.
[3] Or I read/watched newspapers/news channels from another planet. 
[4] Hunger/Conflict/Disease/Genocide/Blood-diamonds.... the list surpasses my imagination.
[5] aka Pondy bhai
[6] As animal rights groups say, when the buying stops, the selling will too.
[7] India-educated guys, remember the Bapu's Talisman  in our NCERT books?
[8] Not that I am into philosophy or anything.

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EDIT: This post seems even more accurate in retrospect of Dennis Ritchie's death. For those not from a Computer Science background, he was the creator of the C programming language. An operating system called UNIX was (almost) remade in C, and most of today's operating systems including MS Windows and Apple's iShit are based (based as in having in their foundation) on C. Why there was no hype around Ritchie is obvious: there was no not much target audience for the media, and there was no new iPhone model to be released a few days later.

5 comments:

  1. You know Karunesh, the reason I had subscribed to your blog? Exactly what you blogged about!! Sans-superficial is what I call it. If you do not care someone died, you do not care and it's *alright* to say it like that. I was emotional about Steve Jobs death because I saw someone who followed his heart, yet I am not offended if you do not care. Different opinions and if we all start respecting each other's POV blogging will be what I want it to be, sans-superficial!

    Cheers to your post and thank you for the mention...

    *tweeted your link*

    #_#
    The Blunt Blog

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  2. @TheBluntBlogger. Thanks for the encouragement. And (some more) gratitude for tweeting it.

    You have given the whole concept a new term: Sans-superficial, which not only describes POV blogging, but also differentiates it from the rest aka the 'superficial'.

    I remember once expressing my views on Sachin to my friends in college, and how they crucified me in heated debate :)

    Hopefully I can keep blogging for some time....

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  3. I am loving your blog and your point of views! :)

    Post is just great! :)

    I knew you were not-so-happy with stevey but i never knew that you will come up with such a nice post! Kudos to you!

    Happy Blogging! :)

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  4. @Arpit Thanks again for your motivation. You know the day me and Vics and Vipul came to your place. You were sick and I talked on the issue with Anshul and Atul?

    I knew since then that writing on this topic would be tough. And I had my Sachin-hating adventures in college as proof.

    Good thing you think I wrote well.
    Thanks for the support, especially because one of the reasons for writing yesterday was because you (and Nitin) asked for it this week.

    Enjoy!

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  5. True that. I am with you on this one.

    ReplyDelete