Guest blogged by Anuj on May 19, 2008.
A little while back my school took me to the American Council Library and let me tell you I was pissed. At the front gate, half of the class goes in and they’re body checking me, spare me the theatrics. I mean these guys couldn’t stop a bunch of planes hitting humongous sky scrapers in their own country, despite the fact that they had prior knowledge that such a thing was possible. Now they’re checking high schoolers to make sure that they don’t have any C-4 on them. Do I come to school wearing some kind of suicide belt? I don’t think so where the hell do they think they’re Beirut, or the mess-o-potamia A.K.A. Iraq? If I was a terrorist, I wouldn’t bother to go through the front gate at all. Instead I would fire a barrage of RPGs into the compound. Way easier, anyway the point is that in my frikkin’ country they’re frikkin’ body checking me? Who the hell do they think they are? I don’t let anyone touch me without my permission and that third rate body guard definitely didn’t have it (neither did “puchu” later that week). They don’t get the point do they?
America used to stand for freedom; presidents like Jefferson, Kennedy, Washington & Roosevelt were people I would gladly give my life for. As they understood what a free nation was and what it meant to be free. If you know the value of freedom you don’t go around curtailing it. They have no right to infringe upon the rights of others since the point they proclaimed to be a land ruled by virtue and liberty. Bush doesn’t get it, this regime doesn’t get it. I wouldn’t trust that guy to run a restaurant let alone run a country. He and the his minions are the root of America’s problem they pay lip service to the ideals that the nation is built upon, they never truly understood them anyway, the results are fiascos like Iraq.
I mean I hated it, who has given them the right to search me, a 16 year old for bombs? I mean I am guest at your institution and you insist on checking me, a kid? Don’t they have anything better to do? They want to eliminate terrorism, don’t they? They need to understand that they will never be able to hunt down and kill each and every one of them, those minions will be replaced because they’ve been validating their belief system. No they have to win the fight by brains not bombs. That’s the answer you seek, the war of terror will never succeed in this way. They’re digging their own grave.
It’s not the fault of the ordinary citizens, no they have too much on their hands already, thanks to a “war president” they hardly have enough to feed their own kids, and their on the verge of an economic recession, do you know where the blame lie? With that 6 year old brain in power. They need to realize the truth and change how they’re functioning, I mean for a change elect a person like Obama, who realizes what the country needs and how to obtain it. They need change, they need Obama.
Anyway, the point is that I am not pro-anything or anti-anything but I just hate it when people pay lip service to their own ideals, my friend has a name for it, he calls it double standards. I saw another example a few days later. Our school has this obsession with what they call “value education”. It’s basically brain washing as values aren’t things that can be forced upon anyone. That violates the fundamental concept behind that word. One has to comprehend & see the truth using one’s own rationality, there can be no delusions about it. It’s something that can’t be forced into anyone, and if you try to do that then it stops being something beautiful. They don’t get that. I don’t know why but they simply don’t. Whatever the reason may be the truth is that they don’t know that the heck they’re talking about.
The topic for the day, or rather for the week was; “Coaching institutions: Good or Bad?”. Now I consider the way things are done in my school to be evil and coaching institutions are pretty much in the same league. They don’t teach people how to think; rather they teach them muscle memory. They just create crude Manchurian candidates incapable of independent decision making. However, this is a conclusion each and every person has to make on their own, the fact that most of them can’t points to something.
The main argument here is that they showed us a short T.V. recording of it and in the end of it our principle comes in and staunchly declares that they’re the scourge of the earth, that they not Al-Qaeda are responsible for spreading terror among the inhabitants of the good Earth. I couldn’t help laughing my head off after the charade was over; I mean that very woman is running a coaching institute within our school to get those picture perfect results that show up on the front pages of newspapers. If those are your values what right do you have to teach any to me?
If you’re so against coaching institutes, then how the hell are you operating one within your own school? It isn’t like anyone won’t listen to you, after all aren’t you the Borg queen of that school? Isn’t it double standards? The very same by which the current government of the USA decides to curtail the freedom of others while trying to protect their own? Isn’t it double standards when a man like Osama Bin Laden calls for the blood of innocent Americans and human beings, while trying to ‘preserve’ the lives of the members of his narrow community? Isn’t it double standards when a common thug refuses to be the victim of a robbery, after all shouldn’t he judge himself by the same standards he judges his own victims? Isn’t it double standards when the Vatican after spreading hate and death around the world chooses to ‘save’ the lives of aborted embryos?
By what standard do they decide that they’re good or evil? And with what standard do they exist? These are the people who are the scourge of earth, the ones who have double standards. Everyone who has committed any crime is guilty of the same, that’s the problem in the end. That’s what plagues mankind, this morality that flips from pole to pole depending upon the flow through it. You can’t have contradictions when dealing with absolutes like life; you can’t have double standards in things like love. The fundamental fact is that Ayn Rand was correct when she said that no organism can exist like this.
The only question that I haven’t been able to answer about this issue is how should I change this? Is it by becoming the embodiment of change? I have always seen things differently, it has doomed me with my peers but it has also enabled me to enjoy the very meaning of life in a way that few other can, I guess that’s my answer, I need to make people think differently. However, I wish to know a concrete answer, I just want to try to find it out, to feel it in my way and to comprehend it.
In the end I just want to thank my friend for helping me see things differently, thank you.
I’m down with viral fever right now, missing out all the action at OSSCamp Delhi happening at IIT Delhi. I surfing aimlessly at Yahoo! Research stumbled across insanely fun and addictive game they’ve made called PhotoSoup.