I just finished watching David Fincher directed – The Social Network. The movie is about the beginnings of Facebook. I see on my IMDb account that this movie marks as my 1,543rd, the number is excluding all the Indian films I’ve watched. I feel so proud of myself .

The perspective points chosen to tell the whole story made the movie very interesting to me. For a person like me who can maintain only a very short span of attention, on almost everything, the back-and-forth-back-and-forth narrative helped me consciously retain and regain the interest in the movie (no pun intended). It’s a Fincher’s movie, so I paid a lot of attention to the content as well. I liked two things in this movie, one is a scene with a latent meaning and the other is the subtle message being conveyed with the transparent glass walls and in general I disliked the way in which women were portrayed.

The First Like: The second scene

It is the second scene in the movie, which is after the scene where Mark’s girlfriend breaks up with him for being a total jerk when they were discussing something important. I characterize him as a jerk because of how condescending he sounds to her during their conversation. Like a typical narcissist he feels that it was her mistake and later on does something very hurting to her on the internet. He gains both limelight and potential ideas to build the Facebook from that hateful action. If Mark Zuckerberg is exactly as he is portrayed in this film, isn’t it just ironic that a completely asocial person went on to build a billion dollar business on social networking. He emerges from the bar into a windy night wearing  a simple pair of jeans and a hoody and starts to jog to his dorm room which is located far far away. At first, the scene appeared to me as though it was merely used to emboss the titles, but the length of this jog-to-his-dorm-room scene made me think otherwise, it has other better and important reasons to be that long than for placing the titles alone. It is a ~3min scene in which he jogs through footpaths, lengthy Harvard University campus pathways, parking lots, parks, stairs up the dorm house to finally enter his dorm room and land directly in front of his laptop on the table to implement his latest idea. I feel that Fincher used this scene to introduce the audience to Mark’s lonely life. If you observe the scene carefully you will notice that there is a clear disparity between Mark and the people he comes across, like the clothes he is wearing and the very act of jogging when all the people around him are walking, sort of implies that it was made deliberately to be that way, Fincher used this simple scene to convey beautifully that like many geniuses Mark is someone who lives a preoccupied and lonely life. It reminds me of how the famous Nobel Prize winning schizophrenic mathematician  John Nash is portrayed in some of the initial scenes of the movie A Beautiful Mind.

The Second Like: The transparent rooms

A room is a civil structure made up of walls and a roof. The walls have a lot of usefulness, they not only define a room’s boundaries, but also provide the most important thing to the inhabitants of a room – seclusion or privacy. No, walls don’t provide security because security is only a feeling, a feeling we get in visual and audio seclusion offered by the thick opaque walls from the outside world. Although windows are a breach to privacy, they have their own usefulness and the inhabitants can control on how much they are willing to share the happenings of their lives inside a room to the outside world. I will probably be right to opine that in the history of our civilization it is here in the 21st century that for the first time rooms have become transparent with glass walls. Transparent rooms are not an open invitation for outsiders to look in, it is rather a subtle one and it is the development of yet another ideology wherein the visual privacy and the feeling of security which the opaque walls offer are no longer important us. People have nothing to hide from the watching world. In this movie you will see the room of a CEO of a company and meeting rooms completely transparent, of course, this is quite apparent in most of the offices these days, but in the context of Facebook, the transparent walls became too obvious, comparable with the Facebook Wall feature, where users can view through the transparent walls right into the lives of willing others. Remarkable isn’t it?

The Dislike: The portrayal of women

When it comes to portrayal of women, all I want to say is that, if the real contribution/participation of women in bringing up Facebook was exactly as it is portrayed in the film then I feel that there is something wrong going on in the society- it is slipping back to olden ages. The times when warrior class men needed women only for their amusement. There is absolutely no exaggeration in my comparison. There is an instance where Mark and Sean Parker are with two girls in a bar discussing and Sean is explaining to Mark on how Facebook has a lot of potential and how it could very well become a billion dollar business and the two girls sitting with them on a stark contrast are simultaneously talking totally irrelevant topics like ordering some shots and using the restroom. Then there is another instance where two underage girls are sitting on a couch playing a shooting video game in a house in California, the house is full of guys working hard round the clock writing code, it portrays a picture of as though the girls were there only when the guys needed a break from their long programming work. There are many such other instances through out the movie where girls are portrayed as dumb, not important and just there to satisfy the Facebook crew needs.

Well if I were talking about some James Bond movie here I wouldn’t have expected anything more with regard to portrayal of women. This is what we mostly see in Bond films, James Bond saves the world and he will end up having sex with his muse. But this movie is not in that class, it is a story of true people and who are responsible for bringing something such a big phenomenon of our time – Social Networking, so I feel that this aspect should not be taken lightly. If we understand the two perspectives here, the way the boys look at girls and the other way around, it will become quite clear of what the relationships are between the sexes. The three main characters of the film Mark, Eduardo and Sean need girls as objects for sex and the girls in turn want these guys, simply because they are the builders of Facebook, they admire them for their fame, money, drinks, drugs and so on. There is absolutely no love towards each other.

Just thought of writing this very tiny blog, it may even seem incomplete.

Exactly forty days ago, on April the 20th, 2010, there was an explosion on an Oil Platform in an American offshore oil well – named Deepwater Horizon, situated in the Gulf Of Mexico region. Due to the explosion the Oil Platform dropped towards the ocean floor and it dragged along with it the connecting pipe (Look at the figures below to understand the whole setup, better). The connecting pipe had punctures in it, so, from day two or since 38 days now, the oil is gushing out into the ocean with no restrictions, at the rate of 5000 barrels/day or 200,000 gallons/day or 757,080 liters/day. The Oil has already reached the Louisiana Coast line which is 50 miles away from the accident site. All efforts to stop or to reduce the oil, coming out of the tube have failed. This disaster is rated as the worst oil spill in the history of the United States of America (By the way there are some where between 20 – 30 oil spills in the US alone, starting from as early as 1937). What’s important to note here is that, this is not yet a spill, there is a difference between a spill and a leak, as of now the oil is still leaking and no one knows when they can plug it …5000 barrels/day.

I don’t want to mention the reasons or who is responsible for this disaster, the american media has done enough of work in this direction. I want to see more than what’s being shown. For those of you who want to see the bigger picture of the devastation, take look at the images in the link below and for those who want to find out what happens at the micro-level, where water and oil mix, watch the video.

Glimpses…

Detailed Pictures of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill

What happens when Oil spills into water?

Amidst all the media noise on politics behind the oil-spill, I would like to appreciate the efforts of a person named Dan Rojas, who along with his wife – Denise runs a Youtube channel named Green Power Science, I urge you to kindly spend 4 mins 7 seconds of your time to watch this video made by Dan in his backyard, which is by far the best video I have come across, which describes the situation of an oil spill as experienced by the fish and the birds living in such water.

I was watching a video called ‘WE’ an Arundathi Roy’s documentary on YouTube(click). Of the various topics she spoke about, I was inspired by the portion on Imperialism. This blog is my view on imperialism and why it is almost impossible to take it out of our lives and society completely.

Definitions and assertions

The words Country, Empire and Imperialism are most frequently occurring in my writing, so it will be useful to set their definitions straight before we go any further.

Let’s start with a Country(click) - The word country is used to politically represent people, who are either living or have lived, in a geographical area.

The definition to an Empire(click) is – A political unit having an extensive territory or comprising a number of territories or nations and ruled by a single supreme authority. As an example, let’s consider the Great Britain; it was a country which had an authority over regions such as India, South Africa, Australia and North America; with this extension of its authority the Great Britain was known as the British Empire. How does a country like Britain transform into an empire from a country? We can find an answer to this question in the definition of Imperialism.

What is Imperialism(click)? Imperialism is a ‘policy of extending’ a nation’s authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political domination over other nations.

Some of my assertions are as follows –

From the definitions, to boldly put it, imperialism is a move to either forcefully shove others of the place where they are living, like in the case of native people living in the North America or to forcefully control the lives of the people against their will, like in the case of British controlling the lives of those living in the region of India from the 16th century till 1947.

The policies of a country are made by its people or the elected leaders or in the olden times, by the royal families. The Great Britain was once an empire only because of its people, the British, who had strong imperialistic ambitions; hence they made and pursued such policies to become one of the largest empires of the world. A country, can try to expand, only if its people have a strong will and power to do so and when they do it; such a country can be called as an empire.

It would be a mistake if we only associate imperialism with a country, even a tribe of few hundred can be called imperialistic if its people are ambitious to expand their region of interest at the expense of their neighbor’s livelihood.

Similarly, a big business corporation can affect the lives of people; such corporations can also be termed imperialistic. For example, TATA Motors in India want to setup a car manufacturing plant at Singur, West Bengal, which would affect the lives of many living in that region since generations.

In the following sections, I will expand my assertions.

Large tribes of ambitious people

I will list a few empires from our past – The Roman Empire, The British Empire, Russia was also an empire, Japan was an empire, Ottoman empire, the Egyptian empire, Mauryan empire was very famous in India, Mongolian empire, Aztecs in South America.

These empires were here not long ago in our past and like any other expanding empire even these empires have carried out constant raids and gone on long crusades to expand their territories, which have resulted in wars with their neighbors and those living in far off regions. With new conquests came newer neighbors, so the wars continued and the empires kept expanding. The crusades and wars were cheered by the empire’s people, because, sometimes their rulers lured them with the ideas of new resources a new land could bring. George W. Bush lured his people for a war on Iraq with a famous quote - “Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”(Full transcript click). But was the war on Iraq at anytime about the Weapons of Mass Destruction, implied in his speech? When the battle plans for Iraq were being drawn; the American business fraternity, confident that the Iraq will lose the war, taking full advantage of the situation, leapt into that country for new oil wells, making new defense deals and targeted the new Iraqi consumers for their products (The 25 Most Vicious Iraq War Profiteersclick).

Politically a country’s or an empire’s decisions are made by its people or their elected leaders. Let’s consider a hypothetical tomorrow, when Maldives, one of the smallest countries in the world gets all the political and military might of what the US has today. Will it continue to be the same Maldives as we know it? Will its people under the newly found power get involved in imperialistic ambitions like the people of other empires in the past or in the present? In my opinion, yes, they would, because, once again it’s not a question of which country it is, it could be India, China, Russia, Brazil, Mexico or any other country, it would end up doing the same, because, a country is how it’s people are and people aspire to have more. No exceptions. To justify this strong stance, let me ask two simple questions – Were there no empires in our past? And. Are the concepts of imperialism new to us? And the List of Empires(click) gives an answer to these questions. If we take a look at this long list we find that, over the last 3000 years of known human history, there have been many empires in every part of our world, striving to acquire new regions and expand. So, when the concept of expansion and desire to acquire more and more was followed by people since ages, then my follow up questions are – Why do we single out US for its ambitions today? Or is there any reason for the people of India to feel bad about their exploitation from the British who ruled them, for India was also a very large region once (Larger than what it is today) and it was controlled by several independent kingdoms, who too have constantly fought with one another to gain control over other regions, who too have exploited the people of newly conquered regions, just like the recent past and the present empires.

By the way, the concept of imperialism is not like 3000 years old, it did not start on any particular date. If we think about it, these concepts, for certain, have had their origins from the time, when people used to still live in tribes. Today’s Empires and Countries are just like large tribes of ambitious people, that’s all.

Changing forms

A Winston Churchill’s quote - ”I do not agree that the dog in a manger (a container) has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”

Running an empire is like playing a game of chess. Chess is a game of war, a prototype, simplified. It is discovered that in a typical chess positions there will be of the order of 30 legal moves. Of those moves, several could lead to a win or to a loss. One wrong move by either side, will need several corrective actions and several wrong moves could lead to a loss. Losing or winning a game of chess is a continuous process. The rise and the fall of an empire is also gradual and continuous, several years, under several rulers with several rights and wrongs, made Rome rise to its might and later fall. When the empires start to grow, they become hard to manage. If one empire shows weakness it’s only because of the presence of a stronger opponent, who will eventually and as always, fills into its place.

For example, let’s go back in time again, the British could move into India only because of the wrong moves made by the tail-end Mughal rulers, who were ruling India till then. The Mughal Empire was established by Babur, who defeated the Delhi Sultanate comprising of Afghan and Turkic rulers. The Delhi Sultanate came into existence when Ghori defeated and killed the Prithviraj Chauhan of Ajmir, so on and so forth. Imperialism is constant, but the empires, only they keep changing and emerging in new forms.

The two sides in Imperialism

Imperialism will always come with two sides attached to it, a side where populations enjoy what the expansion has to offer, so, they support it for a continual in their comforts and the other side, a side where populations lose their rights under a new force.

The equation that we have to understand here is quite simple – on one side it is a large number of people (colonies) who are being controlled, by a few on the other side (ruling/controlling side). The population in the colonies has to work hard to support the comforts or to improve the riches of their controllers. As and how the ruling side start to rise the bar set for their living conditions or to their wealth, higher and higher, the people of the colonies are pressurized to work much harder and harder. Because that’s when the equation gets balanced.

To illustrate, let’s take an early 18th century colony as an example, a time before the industrial revolution, the basic occupation of most of the people in such a colony used to be closely linked to agriculture. In that colony, an agriculturist had to not just work hard to support his and his family’s lives, but he should also consider working harder and longer against his will, only to keep those who were ruling him comfortable. His agricultural yields used to depend on the demand set by the ruling. To meet such targets he was forced to hire more people to work for him, creating a large workforce. The demands of the ruling side will no doubt create a lot of employment opportunities and a source of income/livelihood to a lot of people in the colonies, which is a good thing because, both the employment levels and standard of life of people are considered as few of the important factors affecting an economy of a region. But keeping these indicators aside for a while, its easy to notice that, the need to create this new workforce came together in the first place to serve one purpose only and that is the incoming demand. Due to these demands the targets which the agriculturists set for themselves were not only to satisfy their wants, but also to satisfy the demands of the ruling side. Why should some people work longer when they don’t want to or work harder than they have to, to keep the others comfortable? And if there are any benefits coming out of such an economic system, they become questionable and they should not be treated or stressed upon as favors made by the ruling side on the colonies.

A large Indian company called TATA Industries wants to setup a car manufacturing unit at Singur, West Bengal (WB), India (Detailed Reportclick). The WB government claims that, the action to setup an industry there is a move towards transforming the region into an industrialized economy from an agrarian economy. The WB government and the people who support industrialization, point out that – this will bring a lot of economic benefits to that state; it will offer employment to a lot of people, uplift their lives and improve the economy. But to me, this is yet another classic example where imperialism has changed its form – a modern day form, where it is being packaged and sold well to the very same people who are planned to be exploited. What many fail to see here is an exact similarity in the claims made by the WB government and TATA Industries, from those of the 18th century colonial system. The planning of an industry at Singur did not come about to improve the standard of life of those 7500 people who will work for TATA, it is just an obvious outcome of the plan, even if it is intentional, it is only secondary; the primary and true reason behind bringing together this big workforce is to improve the life standards and riches of the stock holders of TATA Industries. The only differences we can see here from the 18th century colonial system form of imperialism, is that – in the former time, the colonies were made to work hard, brutally, from far off regions by kings and queens, while, in today’s time these rulers belong to the same region, as chairmen and stock holders of giant corporations, managing the workforce in a civilized way, a 21st century style – ‘corporate style’.

Careers, employment, future, goals, white/blue collar jobs, development, improving the standard of life, salary, hikes, quality of life, economic growth, growth indicators, demand and supply chains, trends etc, are just a bunch of words cooked up for the 21st century form of imperialism, attaching some false emphasis and used only to attract or to convince others of a good living. If you ask me, slavery could once again be a much more appropriate of a word to describe this system, where a small number of people covertly set a purpose in the lives of the others, only to achieve their primary interests.

The human flaw

I have read and heard several stories about the suffering under the exploitation of a force. Those who suffer, as always, will find a temporary relief when they fight back the controlling force. But I feel that such resentment against an immediate ruling empire is not at all thoughtful. Simply, because, empires are just representatives of imperialism, if you shoo-off one to be relived from, such relief will last only until the next one comes around, the true and complete form of evil here is imperialism, which we mostly fail to notice. For example, the people living in India should not have just targeted the British Empire because the British Empire is just another empire.

Some claim that the imperialism is a concept of the west, but I defy it and rather feel that it is a human characteristic and hence, universal. To me Imperialism is an amplified version of human greed and I feel that the human greed is a product of two entities – first, a variable which is our highly developed reasoning skills and second, a constant which is the survival of the fittest. The culprit in this product is our extraordinary reasoning skills, which has amplified the constant – “law of nature” resulting into this insatiable greed. Greed has its origin only in the minds of human, flawed. For example, Winston Churchill’s insensitivity towards the native Americans is not because he is cruel or a racist, or a British, he could be all that – cruel, insensitive and racist, but I feel that his view on gaining control over the lives of others, living elsewhere, has got to do more with his greedy ambitions.

Why haven’t our skills to be more reasonable with everything else around us, developed as much as our reasoning skills? Let’s face it, humans want to dominate. Had these innumerable wars we fight for domination been inter-species, we could have hoped for a settlement at some time, but such a war of domination over the other species of this planet has long been won by us and decisively. Today, we have emerged as the masters of this planet. So, to keep ourselves busy and amused, we have turned over ourselves, engaging in endless intra-species wars for domination (List of wars in Europeclick). Just take a look at the size of Russia on a map, it is the largest country in the world today and it is about 244 times larger than its neighbor – Georgia, with whom, Russia is still in the process of wars, for defining its borders. So, just how much is enough? How large should a country be?

If we take a look at the last 3000 years of documented human history, we are the only species who are engaged in causing large scale destruction from constant and prolonged wars. Apart from the wars for establishing dominance in terms of wealth and power, there have also been wars for other reasons, such as, dominant religion, god, caste and race. Such concepts, if you ask me, used mostly for the discrimination of human populations, have been here since thousands of years now and I think that, it is time they reached a state of maturity. But even to this day, we are still not ready to unanimously accept them, as they are. Is it so hard for us to realize that they will fail for many, many more years to make a final lasting case for themselves? Is it not time we consider taking up some action items on these other issues, perhaps to reform or reconstruct or if impossible, abolish these crappy concepts? Without a unanimous acceptance or complete abolishment of these concepts, it is for certain that they will remain for a long time, as alternative reasons for humanity to be engaged in long lasting fights to thrust superiority in terms of religion, god, caste and race, among themselves to higher levels.

Conclusion

We should look out carefully to identify how the imperialism is being applied in our time; the terms such as kings, queens, slavery, ruling and colonialism may not be used anymore, because they sound primitive and unpleasant to large populations, from our past experiences. The modern day terms sound like – World Trade Organization (WTO), World Bank (WB), corporatism, free trade agreements, globalization, capitalism, world economic forums, patents etc. The roles of kings and queens have been taken over by the presidents, ministers, chairmen and so on.

The empires constantly come and go. A simple fight against a dominating empire of one’s time will utmost result in ousting only that power and yielding a temporary relief from an oppressor. Such fights will only be redundant. The United Nations (UN) is one such temporary and futile effort made by us to prevent future wars. Futile because, it has only brought a false or a biased peace to this world.

I personally feel that the imperialistic ambitions of humans can never be gotten rid off. Such ambitions involve elements of human nature, so, getting rid of it from this world needs cleansing greed off from our minds, which is a fight over our nature. Can we ever imagine getting into such a fight? Are we interested to see a blue planet with no lines? Is it Utopian, too much to ask for? Or, am I dreaming about the Navi, people of Pandora?

- The End –

These are my views and understanding about Imperialism. The only motivation I had during this writing, was my constant belief in my understanding of this topic. I found an encouragement to express my views when I watched Arundathi Roy’s ‘We’, kindly follow the link I have provided at the beginning of the blog to watch a very interesting and moving video. I was also inspired by James Cameron’s Avatar(click) and the indigenous people, the Navi of Pandora, who live in harmony with the nature around them and hence themselves. The only companion I had during this time was my loneliness, for which I have to thank my small room in Delft, where I get it in abundance.

I do think that many of you may have your own or know about other’s opinions about Imperialism. Feel free to share such valuable thoughts and also your comments/criticism about my views, in the comments section below.

To know more about me please go to the About section, which is somewhere below the comments section on this same page.

Thanks for reading.