A scion gets real

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 1

Oscar Wilde’s famous play about the importance of several things, including marriage and morality could be a metaphor for today’s troubles about identity. It’s something I’ve been musing over for a while now. Identity, from Greek – ideo – the same.

In the play Jack’s alter ego, Ernest, allows him to, in today’s parlance, “explore his other side”. Or as Sherry Turkle might say – explore one of his many other identities. Jack’s friend, Algernon Moncrieff, has a fictional but useful ‘friend’ so, like today’s computer users, he expects that there are opportunities to be/explore/befriend ‘an other’. Or, like these two, have an alter ego that allows us to be somewhere or someone else.

It all becomes a bit of a muddle in the play and there are several puns and games around earnestness. And perhaps the women are as silly as the men but everything is sorted in the end.

This, alas, may not happen in today’s computer identity muddles.

OK, I’m exploring a recent experience here. (My 3 regular readers may wish to close their eyes). I recently entered into an online communication. I understood that what was online was a game, (if an intense and long one) but it moved to a different territory when cell phones got involved. So, when we move to another form of technology the game becomes more ‘real’? And yes, I did meet him.

Perhaps, like Cecily, I had already decided how I felt. Perhaps there was some manipulative behaviour. Perhaps we had both built erroneous perceptions of each other. It was all very sweet until his cowardice showed. And that was unpleasant. No happy ending.

And no we don’t discover that, like Jack/Ernest, he was telling the truth all along. I suspect he’s more like Algernon, a bit of a scali(w)ag. Or, maybe it’s as Turkle says the postmodern world is upon us and identity and truth are relative. And I’d better get used to it.

In truth I don’t know and never will. Which renders real life not at all like a jolly play of manners.

“RL is just one more window, and it’s not usually my best one”. Turkle, Who Am We? 2001.

“I’m the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude”. Robt Downey Jnr in Tropic. In Listener article about Davide Fane: March 7, 2009

Relatedlinks perhaps: http://loveontheworldwideweb.wordpress.com/

Greek tango……

no muse today

I’ve been musing on this one for a week or so. Relevant images are copyrighted. Sigh.

We were all deeply interested to see the photo of Willie Apiata on our front pages last week. Not only was it a surprise to see our shy, self effacing VC man looking rugged and sexy, it was a bit of a surprise to learn that he and the SAS were in Afghanistan. I guess it shows how naive we are and how much we believe the “Kiwis are there to keep the peace” rhetoric.

PM John Key says they were not involved in any killing and were there to help the Afghani forces. Ok I believe that – sort of. But to think that ‘our’ troops are not involved in any action at all is truly naive.

And on a similar note: I have been interested in the reports coming out of Britain about Iraq. This in the papers here last week.

Sounds like 1984. Winston, where are you?

An interesting take…….

hehe

Reading and Art: Obsessive Compulsion

It was interesting to visit the NewDowse and to see the work of Cao Fei.

It prompted me to revisit Second Life and the rmb city he shows in his work. To be honest the video was more entertaining than flying around Second Life -which I can find a bit tedious. I did, however like the video about dancers in a factory very much. Images that stay on the retina. It reminded me a little of a local Second Life production by Mike Baker that features the Wellington Railway Station and some dancers. I find this Second Life dance very moving, ethereal and a little compulsive.

Speaking of compulsive, Yayoi Kasama’s exhibition at the City Art Gallery is amazing. It’s fun, spotty and, well, compulsive.

At the same time I was reading a very good book by Orhan Pamuk called the Museum of Innocence . It’s about obsessive compulsion in regard to a woman the main character falls in love with……and museums. Very good but that was enough of obsessive compulsion for a while.

20 Years Since

Fiona Clark Billboard

It’s hard to believe that it’s 20 years since we all ‘celebrated’ the 150 years of the Treaty.

Twenty years since we looked forward with hope to the future. So, what has changed?

There are more Maori with PhDs, ( I could only find this link), more Maori in professions, a Maori TV channel and a few more settlements but……OK Ngai Tahu have a sound economic base and Tainui seem to have found their feet. But……statistics for jails, court appearances are no better and sadly Maori still feature in the child beating statistics. To me this indicates poverty, alienation and poor self perception.

So, really, has it got better?

There’s a sense that Maori have taken greater charge of their own development, which is good.
I guess if we are considering Tino Rangatiratanga we might judge that there’s more of that then. Very good.

So, what do we each do, as individuals to make it better?

Enua manea

It was good to spend New Year’s Eve in North Canterbury and to have a lovely New Zealand meal of lamb with a bottle of good Rivola, 2003. And to see the moons in the clear sky.

It was also good to go to Rarotonga to see the sun and participate in the creation of the umu kai.

Rukau, takahi, puke, pork, chicken, utu, pawpaw, salad, pineapple, kumara, potatoes, pumpkin…………all cooked with aroha and enthusiasm.

The dvd of “how to create an umu” is my next creative activity.

Meanwhile here I am singeing banana leaves for the umu.

Merry Xmas

More on a theme

This image may not quite be right but it is a religious theme and the book I’ve just been reading, The Curse of the Self, talks about the ways religions try to help us deal with the self. The author, Mark R Leavy, points out that Western religions focus on our controlling the self and Eastern ones try to get us to ‘quiet the self’.

In short, the book says that few animals have a ’self’ and while in general it’s a blessing for us humans that enables us to plan, reflect, socialise and so on, that it can also get in the way. ‘If we cannot return to a time before self’, he says, ‘the only way forward is to a state of mind in which we use our self when needed but are not a slave to its every egocentric, egoistic, and egotistical whim’.

The book covers, intelligently, but in an easily digested manner, our place and views of ourselves in relation to our social groups, the terrible things ourselves can do to us and some suggestions for helping ourselves out.

It’s a book I’d recommend.

Celebration

I celebrated the two years since my operation (the one that stopped the excruciating pain but caused me to become a cripple) by going to the Wailers concert in Porirua and taking the cripple sign off the back of my car.

It’s also one year since I drove again (using my left foot).

The concert was fun. Hikoikoi, the local Petone group, were a wee bit off key perhaps? but sweet and Katchafire were all professional sound with a great saxophonist. It was good to know most of the songs and they got the place rocking, er…….. moving.

The Wailers were pretty cool: a young woman (can’t find her name) was all energy but her version of Turn the lights down low…lacked something. Perhaps it was that sultry tone in Marley’s voice. The encores Buffalo Soldier and Exodus were good final songs.

The crowd was a mixture of ages and colour, with a tendency to be brown and have dreads. Nice mellow atmosphere and even a chance for a bit of a dance. Everyone knew all the words to all the songs, so we sang along too.

It was also the celebration of the opening last year of Porirua’s Te Rauparaha arena.

It’s been, as they say, a wee journey.

I guess it’s been a wee journey for the Wailers too.