tripu

Last night I went to watch Inception. I quite liked it.

Before last night, I was feeling a bit sceptical about the film. Is it just me, or so many action/fantasy films from Hollywood lately are remakes of The Matrix, Mission: Impossible or something of the sort? There is so much creativity (or lack thereof) spawning from the trunk of inspiration that goes from The Matrix to Blade Runner, all the way through Dark City and Ghost in the Shell.

Bullet-time, martial arts, alternative realities and simulations are cool. Those representations are also rich in suggestive images of urban decay and dark hypertrophied cities. I’m all for that, you know. But aren’t we overdoing it?

There’s a bit of that in Inception, too. Fortunately, in this particular case Christopher Nolan has managed to write a story that is both entertaining and provocative. And the intense soundtrack by Hans Zimmer fits very nicely.

I write about Inception first as an excuse. Truth is that, at the risk of becoming definitely a bore to my family and friends, this post is about Japan and my appetite for Japan. Again.

My emotions about Japan are difficult to explain. Even before I visited the country for the first time (and long before I told anyone close to me about this interest) I felt strangely attracted by it. In some sense it is only logical in my case, for I get easily bored with the environment I live in, and in Europe Japan (still) represents one of the most extremely exotic, yet reachable, places in the world.

Today it dawned on my that my image of Japan, and Tokyo, isn’t but an imagined, personal place that is utterly unattainable. My own particular vision of that part of the world is at risk of becoming a sort of personal “limbo” (in the Inception meaning of the term): an unreality that grows the more sophisticated and tempting the more you indulge in it… and one that can destroy you if you aren’t able to tell reality from dreams.

Japan is to me a perfect land of material progress, urban development, money, rules and the future.

Of course not.

I’m lying. I am well aware of the imperfection of anything that exists, by definition. Italy wasn’t my panacea eight or nine years ago, London didn’t make me happy either, and so far I don’t feel as comfortable as I would wish living in Madrid.

At times I find myself on the streets of Madrid, idly watching people talking and walking around me, when suddenly that particular smell I found in some hidden residential area of Kobe hits me out of the blue. There is a little girl skipping happy ten meters from me and I can’t help swapping the setting, so now she’s in a pier in Yokohama at dusk. There are wild colours in the sky all across the bay and silent old people on bicycles gently pass me by as they ride home. Or maybe it’s raining like hell. It doesn’t matter, because it’s beautiful and different and surprising anyway.

Why do I keep on seeing Japan all around, like Dominic Cobb sees his dead wife in every corner?

It is also a permanent contradiction for me: I’m pretty sure I could be in Japan by now if I had started working hard on it three or four years ago. I long for it, but I don’t seem to be able to commit to it. I’m procrastinating and writing posts like this one instead of directing my efforts towards that goal. That contradiction is the more annoying at times when I’m confronted with alternatives and need to make bold decisions. Did I mention I just became 30? I won’t deny the influence of such a symbolic date in this post (it’s such an stereotype), but I think there is more than that.

That contradiction of mine is another hint telling me that that Japan is not real, is not what I want. As if somewhere very deep I knew that it’s just an imagined alternative reality. As if I knew it will be disappointing at the end.

Or maybe I’m just scared of trying.

Una muestra más de las actitudes machistas que aún pululan por ahí, y que atribuyen a las mujeres, de forma paternalista, un carácter fundamentalmente emocional y débil, relegando su competencia profesional y su independencia a un segundo plano. Un enfoque esencialista según el cual las mujeres, por ser mujeres, son inseguras y necesitan de afectos en el lugar de trabajo, víctimas de un ideal romántico de dependencia (fuentes y enlaces más abajo):

«Las mujeres, por miedo a no ser queridas viven en la impostura, un modelo de comportamiento femenino que tiene como objetivo adaptarse a las distintas exigencias para evitar el rechazo.»

«La forma femenina de estar en el mundo está marcada por el miedo a no ser queridas, y este miedo a no ser aceptadas convierte a las mujeres en sumisas, les impide demostrar su talento y provoca una actitud que envía al entorno un mensaje de búsqueda de protección, se infantilizan.»

«Se ha llamado el Síndrome de Maripili a las actitudes no conscientes de sabotaje que tienen las mujeres y son la consecuencia del miedo a no ser queridas.»

…solo que estas citas están extraídas de una fuente poco sospechosa de machismo (en principio): la web Liderazgo Femenino (no encuentro información sobre qué institución está detrás), ligada al I Congreso Internacional de Liderazgo Femenino, que tuvo lugar hace pocos días en Barcelona.

Cualquier intento por eliminar discriminaciones a la hora de contratar mujeres y por llevar los salarios medios femeninos al mismo nivel que los de los hombres es muy loable. Esta web, y el congreso que han organizado, persiguen esos objetivos. Por eso les doy la enhorabuena. Pero a veces me da la impresión de que con «ayudas» como estas las mujeres no necesitan enemigos.

Llevo un año haciendo estudios culturales, aprendiendo cómo se aprende acerca de la cultura. Me han hablado de cultura popular, cultura de masas, contracultura y Cultura con mayúscula. He leído acerca de culturas hegemónicas, minoritarias, mestizas e híbridas; manipulación cultural, teorías y escuelas diversas, distintas interpretaciones. Hemos leído artículos sobre la cultura homosexual en EEUU, sobre el reduccionismo que asimila las culturas de Asia Oriental a un puñado de estereotipos, sobre grupos que se identifican con la cultura popular audiovisual japonesa, sobre las connotaciones culturales de ciertos códigos de conducta sexual y de relaciones afectivas entre las personas…

Y sin embargo, ninguno de los artículos que he leído mencionaba siquiera «la cultura de los hombres» ni «la cultura femenina».

…hasta que Liderazgo Femenino ha descubierto que las diferencias entre hombres y mujeres en el entorno laboral se deben a un choque entre dos culturas diferentes, nada menos:

«Las mujeres somos una cultura diferenciada [sic] y por ello tenemos una manera de ver y una manera de no ver [sic] y unos miedos incorporados a esas percepciones. Las mujeres nos colocamos en el mundo con miedo a no ser queridas, con miedo a no ser aceptas [sic] y para tratar de evitar el rechazo impostamos nuestra identidad, nuestros deseos, nuestra voz.»

Pero, por encima de todo, que quede claro que la línea de Liderazgo Femenino no es machista:

«El liderazgo femenino aparece cuando nos autorizamos a vivir según nuestra identidad, al margen de los estereotipos. Y es entonces cuando encontramos este sereno poder, somos poderosamente femeninas y creamos entornos de respeto.»

Lo dicho: con estas ayudas…

Xirick has been damn fast replying to my previous post. And the pictures he’s used are great to illustrate my changes for the near future.

What Xirick didn’t know is that I already had an analogous counterpoint for my own argument, ready to be posted today. You know, being as contradictory as I am, you can’t post about happiness one day an not try to balance that with sadness the day after. Or maybe you can. Well, I don’t think you can. But you definitely can.

I know: these photos aren’t nearly as good as the ones in Xirick’s post. But my point was to illustrate the differences using only my own photos.

Enough said.

I’m sad because in about four months I’ll be switching from this…

…to this:

From this…

…to this:

From this…

…to this:

From this…

…to this:

…and so many other wonderful things, habits, activities and feelings that I will leave behind. Some of them difficult, if not impossible, to find in other places. Like the amazing architecture, or rather the flamboyant collage of different styles. And the ostentatious buildings, the cityscapes, and that feeling of living in the city, in the centre (not the center) of the world:

And proper winters (with all the nice things that a winter should have). And solvent organisations to work for; in comfy, spacious offices that are within walking distance from many other important places. Organisations that pay what is fair and where you work the time you are supposed to work, full stop:

And those (few, I know) lovely days of summer spent with friends frolicking on the grass, in one of the many parks:

And the institutions, the organisations, the courses, the opportunities, the knowledge floating around. The libraries, the bookshops:

And the rightful lack of modesty:

And the buzz around, the surprises every day, the unexpected events, the festivals:

And the streets, the variety, the peoples. The freedom, the mind-openers. Walking or running the city. Crossing two blocks means leaving Poland and entering Mexico. Run a bit further and you’re in Guinea-Bissau:

And the hub, the connections, the flights, the trains. The freedom again. Having trouble to decide the destination because all the first five countries in the list are close at hand and inexpensive anyway:

And all the friends stopping by, the guests every couple of weeks, friends of other friends who become friends. The parties, the nights out:

And the culture, the music, the big names:

And the events, the conferences, the initiatives:

And most of all, I will be missing these two so much:

Because in about four months I’ll be switching from this…

…to this:

From this…

…to this:

From this…

…to this:

From this…

…to this:

The absolute genius of Tim Minchin and a very different take on rationalism (audio only):

He is, like George Carlin, a brilliant comedian with a soft spot for science.

“I want to be, if I can, as sure of the world (the real world around me) as is possible. Now, you can only attain that to a certain degree, but I want the greatest degree of control. I don’t… I never involve myself in narcotics of any kind, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink… because that can easily just fuzz the edges of my rationality, fuzz the edges of my reasoning powers; and I want to be as aware as I possibly can. That means giving up a lot of fantasies that might be comforting, in some ways; but I’m willing to give that up in order to live in an actually real world — as close as I can get to it.”

— James Randi (@8:03)

“Economists… forgive me, for those of you who play the lottery… but economists, at least among themselves, refer to the lottery as a ‘stupidity tax’. Because the odds of getting any payoff by investing your money in a lottery ticket are approximately equivalent to flushing the money directly down the toilet (which, by the way, doesn’t require you to actually go to the store an buy anything). Why in the world would anybody ever play the lottery?”

— Dan Gilbert (@6:10) via The German Component

“One great mistake (and maybe this is the legacy of the Romantic Era) is that we think that all the great feelings of transcendence that you might get in the face of a marvelous piece of art; or you feel in front of a landscape; or the wonderful, oceanic sense you have when you feel love for someone… we have this idea that somehow these are incompatible with being rational. And this is a great problem. There is nothing paradoxical about a rational man or woman falling in love or [swirling?] in front of a Michelangelo. These are the great, wonderful emotions of being an adult human being.”

— Ian McEwan (@17:20) via Richard Dawkins

I love quotes; I collect them. Whenever I read or hear a sequence of words that strikes me as true, or as particularly beautiful, cunning or moving, I write it down. Oddly, I have to admit that I love discovering quotations even if the source is considered frivolous or unreliable, e.g. advertising. I guess that the mere realisation that someone else uttered, or put in writing, a thought that one has always regarded as useful or valuable is in itself exciting, no matter the agenda or the legitimacy of the author.

In the last few days I have stumbled on these three wonderful videos in YouTube, all of them related to rationalism in one way or another; and I strongly agree with most of what they say.

What do you think?

As naïve and twee and theatrical as they may sound, and yet these words by Will Smith really strike a chord on me. I can relate to this exaltation of knowledge and self-discipline; mentally and physically. Lore in its purest form — books. Control through one sport, the sport.

“The keys to life for me are reading and running. The idea that there are millions and billions of people who have lived before us, and they had problems and they solved them and they wrote it in a book somewhere. […] There is no issue we can have that somebody didn’t already write a thousand years ago in a book. […] You know it’s in a book somewhere but you’ve got to find the right one that is going to give you the proper information.”

“When you get on the treadmill you deprive yourself of oxygen. What kind of person you are will come out very, very quickly. You’re either the type of person who will say you’re going to run three miles or you stop the treadmill at 2.94 and you hit it and you call 2.94 3 miles, or you get off after a mile, or you’re the type of person that runs hard through the finish line and when you get to 3.0 you realize, ‘God, I could really do 5,’ and you go ahead and do two more. And that little person talks to you and says, ‘Man, do you feel our knee? We should stop. I feel we should stop ourselves right now. This is not healthy anymore.’ When you learn to get command over that person on that treadmill, you learn to get command over that person in your life.”