I want to write about two people I've met recently who made a tremendous impression upon me; one an activist, the other an artist.
This weekend I had the good fortune to spend some time with Adrian Hong - the founder and director of LiNK, Liberty in North Korea. And I urge you to visit that website. I met him and his buddy Eliot, and although Adrian strikes me as an intensely passionate and intense guy him and Eliot have a great sense of humor and warmth so I liked them immediately.
For years my email sig had a link to Human Rights in North Korea. My angst directed at the situation was one of those little causes I carried for myself. What's ultimately shocking to me most importantly is how people I know who are genuinely informed about politics know so little about the situation.
By lowest estimates the famine resulted in 3 million people dead or missing.
We are talking about a country run by someone who shuts off the electricity to his own people at night.
When I write here on this blog about the tyranny of mythology and narrative constructs I mean in its most horrendous form something like what you see in North Korea. A leader who has attained a false divinity to his people by absolute control of the story. Jong Il's insanity may be amusing on a kitsch level, but he is a perfect modern day example of someone enshrining themselves and the almost unbearable awfulness of humanity to fall under the spell of a situation like that.
Whatever you think about North Korea, if you haven't read testimony of defectors or seen the pictures of dead families attempting to flee into China, or the video footage of farmland turned into opium crops... You don't know the magnitude of this.
Something that made a huge impact on me years ago was the work of RENK. They were smuggling cameras into North Korea to obtain footage. Several of their journalists went missing. This to me was an application of filmmaking that was vital and truly important.
It's all too easy to get overwhelmed, to fall spell under the weight of just how terrifying the evidence is for our species as a whole. So we give up. People like Adrian impress me because they actually are doing something about this. In any case I hope to help him in some small ways as I can when I can in future, but please please visit the website to at least learn what is at stake and what has happened.
_
Someone else I met recently had a tremendous impact on me.
One of the effects of my wanderlust is knowing so many great people who are spread out all over the world, and sadly sometimes I lose touch with them. Life and the maintenance it requires intervenes in its own fashion and the same happens to them, or you forget to respond to an email and life goes on.
But in that peculiarly unsettling modern fashion I heard secondhand and was able to vaguely ascertain that this person had an awful accident recently. Infuriatingly, thanks to the Internet, I heard the worst possible thing first, as one only can in a modern fashion.
It's been a very strange day and night since then.
Well this is for them, as someone who doesn't pray, to someone who does and told me the value and importance of it... I know we only met for a single night, but many things you said and told me about resonated with me enough that they are still carried with me now, for all the hardship in your life you set me off feeling better about my own. I hope more than anything that all sees you well, and you get better. I want to see the mosquito story someday. Your close friend needs you here in this life.
An incredible shooting star ran over Brooklyn last night, low flying and burning bright. Never seen one like that before here in the city. There was something I wanted to wish for immediately on impulse because of things going on in my life. But I stopped myself and gave the wish up for you. Be well.
Still can't sleep...
This weekend I had the good fortune to spend some time with Adrian Hong - the founder and director of LiNK, Liberty in North Korea. And I urge you to visit that website. I met him and his buddy Eliot, and although Adrian strikes me as an intensely passionate and intense guy him and Eliot have a great sense of humor and warmth so I liked them immediately.
For years my email sig had a link to Human Rights in North Korea. My angst directed at the situation was one of those little causes I carried for myself. What's ultimately shocking to me most importantly is how people I know who are genuinely informed about politics know so little about the situation.
By lowest estimates the famine resulted in 3 million people dead or missing.
We are talking about a country run by someone who shuts off the electricity to his own people at night.
When I write here on this blog about the tyranny of mythology and narrative constructs I mean in its most horrendous form something like what you see in North Korea. A leader who has attained a false divinity to his people by absolute control of the story. Jong Il's insanity may be amusing on a kitsch level, but he is a perfect modern day example of someone enshrining themselves and the almost unbearable awfulness of humanity to fall under the spell of a situation like that.
Whatever you think about North Korea, if you haven't read testimony of defectors or seen the pictures of dead families attempting to flee into China, or the video footage of farmland turned into opium crops... You don't know the magnitude of this.
Something that made a huge impact on me years ago was the work of RENK. They were smuggling cameras into North Korea to obtain footage. Several of their journalists went missing. This to me was an application of filmmaking that was vital and truly important.
It's all too easy to get overwhelmed, to fall spell under the weight of just how terrifying the evidence is for our species as a whole. So we give up. People like Adrian impress me because they actually are doing something about this. In any case I hope to help him in some small ways as I can when I can in future, but please please visit the website to at least learn what is at stake and what has happened.
_
Someone else I met recently had a tremendous impact on me.
One of the effects of my wanderlust is knowing so many great people who are spread out all over the world, and sadly sometimes I lose touch with them. Life and the maintenance it requires intervenes in its own fashion and the same happens to them, or you forget to respond to an email and life goes on.
But in that peculiarly unsettling modern fashion I heard secondhand and was able to vaguely ascertain that this person had an awful accident recently. Infuriatingly, thanks to the Internet, I heard the worst possible thing first, as one only can in a modern fashion.
It's been a very strange day and night since then.
Well this is for them, as someone who doesn't pray, to someone who does and told me the value and importance of it... I know we only met for a single night, but many things you said and told me about resonated with me enough that they are still carried with me now, for all the hardship in your life you set me off feeling better about my own. I hope more than anything that all sees you well, and you get better. I want to see the mosquito story someday. Your close friend needs you here in this life.
An incredible shooting star ran over Brooklyn last night, low flying and burning bright. Never seen one like that before here in the city. There was something I wanted to wish for immediately on impulse because of things going on in my life. But I stopped myself and gave the wish up for you. Be well.
Still can't sleep...
1 Comments:
ok this is another thing entirely. tyranny of mythology as i think you called it is intensely depressing. it seems to drive home the value of what we have, such as it is, in our constitution... but only if we take care of it? i get a bit lost with how to be a good citizen of the world. my instincts betray me here. awareness-raising like the link folks is good. i guess that's a good start.
i'm glad you clarified.
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