Viraj's Weblog

It turns out today's hanging of Saddam Hussein, pronounced like 'sodom' in the media and by politicians to emphasize his evilness, falls on a Muslim holy day called Eid Al-Adha. There are videos circulating of the whole execution, and of course the media highlights the dead man walking scenes. Interesting how its "ok" to televise this sort of thing, but we don't parade current death row inmates. It's almost as if we are taking small steps towards televised executions.

Just so you know, not all Iraqis are happy:

“He gassed his own people. He never appreciated differences of opinion. He ruled by fear,” said Jaffer. “All dictators should meet the same fate that Saddam did. However, he should not have been hanged on Eid Al-Adha. As a human being I can’t approve that. Never. Even ordinary criminals are not hanged or executed on Eid.”

And even more vehement:

“Would it be OK if the president of the United States were hanged on Dec. 25?” shouted Anmar Al-Khodair, an Iraqi pilgrim from Anbar. When it was pointed out to him that it was the Iraqi government not the US government that executed Saddam, his reply was: “This Iraqi government is a puppet government. It is the US that is responsible for security and all other aspects in Iraq. The Iraqi government is based in the US-protected Green Zone in Baghdad and the writ of the government is confined to the Green Zone in Iraq. Go ask anybody. He was, is and will remain our hero.”

Take what you will from that, I just find it rather interesting that Saddam's hanging happened so soon. Think of how long death penalty trials last in the US. This seems rather rushed. Honestly, whenever I saw Saddam on TV, he looked brain damaged in some way. He hardly appeared like a harsh dictator. They must have broken him pretty bad. I wouldn't be surprised if drugs were used or if he received some sort of abuse.

Unbelievably, there was a point when Saddam really admired the US. His favorite film was The Godfather. He wore pinstripe suits, and revered the whole gangster mentality for the same reasons we revere the Sopranos. He was a US problem child.

What rather gets me down is that we have to continue killing other human beings. The fact that we rely on violence to solve problems is evidence to me that we are descendents from apes and lower animals. There is no rationalization of killing, and it requires no IQ to make the decision to kill someone.

It reminds me of the latest Mike Judge movie Idiocracy. Judge, if you don't know, made Office Space, probably the defining movie of the IT generation. In Idiocracy, he envisions a future of really stupid people. It reminded me of a live Futurama, and was honestly both funny and scary. You see, stupid people reproduce more. There is an extremely intelligent opening scene that shows how 'smart' people take time to make the decision of having children, have very few, and rationalize the whole process too much. On the other hand, trailer parks overflow with babies. Cut to the Costco-esque future. If you are smart, a doctor may tell you:

So basically it says here you're fucked up, you sound like a fag, and your shit's all retarded.

Beware of the man who brings the jaguar. So says a little girl in the movie, and it is probably good advice for any era. I think I've learned what Mel Gibson likes to show in his movies: the endurance of human beings. If you think about Braveheart, Passion of the Christ, and Apocalypto, they are all portraying people who go through incredible suffering and at some point redeem themselves. He takes characters and pushes them to the limit in excruciatingly violent, spiritual, and sometimes unbelievable ways.

Apocalypto is raw and visceral, but it gives a hint that the reality must not have been far off from how it was portrayed. It is intelligent and believable. The movie is in another language, but you quickly gain empathy with the characters, which really shows Gibson's directorial skill. At over 2 hours, I thought I would get bored. But honestly, I could not take my eyes off the screen. The way the story flows and the journey the main character goes through is compelling and fascinating.

I had just watched part of Spencer Well's Journey of Man, and I was eerily reminded of it. That documentary provides possible explanations of how humans spread out from Africa and traces genetic markers across continents. It describes one tribe that for some reason ventured out of Africa to make new civilizations. From that tribe we all descended. But the question is why? Why was that journey made out of Africa and what sparked it? More importantly, how did they do it? The documentary describes that those humans had to have the brain power to survive the travel, and that something, almost superhuman, had to have happened to them biologically. Our increase in brain prowess is many times described as a chain reaction, a snowballing of knowledge so to speak.

But it seems that the trigger is genetic. That something was written in an early human's genes to venture out and form civilization as we know it. Some random mutation that allowed him to survive and reproduce. That is the person that brings about a radical change.

The lead character of Apocalypto exemplifies this 'superhuman'. He is different, and sees things that others do not. His body is put through what would likely kill other humans. Yet he continues to survive, as if he has no control in the matter. As if the book is written in his genes that he must survive, and nothing he can do will prevent that. His endurance was given to him for a reason. Those genes may have been dormant, but an external stress was needed to express them. It makes me wonder, what was the external stress put on our ancestors?

The movie also reminded me alot about religion and why it was so essential to people of those times. If you think about it, we tend to invoke God at times of suffering. But how much suffering is going on in our lives today? Is it any wonder that atheism is prevailing? Think about a life where the people you care about are killed in an instant and you must push the limits of your body to survive. A life where you are continually happy has no need for a God. But a life of the opposite requires it.

Interesting talk at Harvard with Steven Colbert.

Here is the full version of Jesus Camp online. Definitely worth checking out.

Here is a video by Faithless apparently banned on MTV. Really nice juxtaposition of our leisure lives with war.