I have a friend, whom I liked very much and still would like to like.
He is a high school classmate of mine, but I guess we were never really close in high school, for whatever reason that I have always had a clue about but never wanted to acknowledge.
Anyway, we got closer when we were in college, different colleges, with mine in our hometown and his in the capital. So we got close when we were actually apart.
Come to think of it, the thing that tightened the bond was our momentarily converged misunderstandings of what the other person was like.
I found him a guy who wanted to get "the best education", someone who was seemingly interested not only in having the ability to make a living, or even to make money, but in excelling in the one thing he had set his mind to, which could well make a contribution to the actual human civilization and benefit all the ordinary human beings around the world. Something that would make the lives of all people, everywhere, better, instead of something that only feeds the rich while buries the poor, aggrandizes the strong while exploits the weak.
Somehow, somewhere along the way, he got sucked into an operation. It is an operation that tries to turn everybody into a whore, who sells his or her body and soul for a trinket, an item, a product, an asset, a piece of "real" estate, a "portfolio", a life style, a particular "aspiration", or specific kinds of members of the opposite sex, things that he would never want or need, and people whom he would never be interested in, had he still lived in the Eden.
Yet he lives in the world. He hears, reads, and sees. They tell him what he should need or want. He wants to be liked, loved, and esteemed. They tell him how he should achieve these, and they tell everyone what the person is like whom you should like, love, and who demands your esteem.
He bought it, and he turned. He thought reality rules, and since the reality is different from what he had thought, he'd better want something else.
In this way, the operation succeeded. It made him think the things they want him to want are really what he wants himself.
No better whore than this. Willingly, qualm-lessly, doubtlessly, never with hurt pride but always with judgmental arrogance, and with the everyone cheering him on, with unfeigned admiration.
I know he has defense for it: "You know, what am I supposed to do? Judging from the way you speak of 'the operation', you know how it works - it crushes those who refuse it, and awards those who join. I have a life to live, and I even want to make something out of it. I cannot afford the sorry existence you proscribed."
And he would tell me: "You just never grew up. You live in your shell and you had the shame to tell me how I should live my life in the real world? You know nothing of it."
Protest I would: "My dear dear friend, you know me. I had bared my all to you, as you knew. Not that I ever put up much disguise. You and I shared something that others would never with us. We know where we come from. We know our roots. We know what we were. We know our history, our origin, our genesis.
"In more practical words, we know what we really were and still are, had 'the operation''s devastation never occurred or even occurred.
"You know, my dear friend, I would never look down upon you. Sharing what we shared, it is simply impossible for me to look down upon one of my own. I treat you all not simply as my brothers and sisters, but as my alter-egos. It is a bond that would never break. I would fulminate, I would curse, I would berate, but I would always love."
Then he would retort: "That is disingenuous. You never lived. After all the backstabbing, the double-dealing, the about-face, much of which I experienced with my 'alter-egos', I doubt you could still 'love'."
I would again appeal: "Would those happen if all of you were still in Eden, instead of in the 'operation'? Think on it, my other self. Think on it. Your sufferings you have made yourself. Your fate you sealed yourself. And your grave you dug yourself.
"And you call my existence 'sorry'? Well, I concede it is. But so is yours. And my sorriness is because of your sorriness; it is caused by your sorriness. You can say I have never lived, but had you, all of you, refused to be fuel to the operation, I might have, with every one of you, lived in a new Eden that would put to shame the previous lesser evil of one."
He would not be moved: "You are babbling. The operation has no mercy. Before you can have enough power to kill it, it always wins. You join, or you die. Simple as that. And I do not want to die. I like my life, my entry-level luxury car, my new apartment, my girlfriend who really knows how to dress and how to make love, my nights out in the city, my shopping in the boutiques, my web-ordered consumer products mailed to me, and, you know what is the best of it? The sense of being accepted and loved, when you know you have a position in the world, and that your folks would not worry about you, and you have a family to come home to, and your family and friends even get together sometimes not for any specific purpose, just to feel good.
"I love all of that, and I have no intention of ever abandoning any of it for your life, as if you even had one. You know what, do not talk to me about this any more. There is no point. I just love what I love. I just want what I want. I only care about if I am happy. Yes, I only care about myself. I said it. If they give what I am doing a meaning, or give it a purpose or a cover of 'righteousness', telling me as well as everyone else what I am doing is of value and right, I am all the happier for it. But even if they do not, which never happens, I am still all for it. As long as it gets me through the day, I do not care if it satisfies my conscience or fools it, is truthful about its purpose or lies about it. As long as I do not feel a qualm about it, I do not care about what I do or what it does to others. Of course, I'll always believe and say I am doing it for the right purpose, because, in the final analysis, whether it is actually right or whether it is right with caveats and nuances do not matter, what matters is if I can make myself believe in it, heart and soul, with no caveats, sans nuances, never second-guessing.
"I wish I never had this conversation with you. And I wish I never had this 'Eden' experience with you, giving you all the pretext for chatting me up a storm for this nonsense about what I want. Just so you know, I did not know what I wanted back then, which I guess is what made it so Eden for you, but I know what I want right now because I've grown up! The more people grow up, the more clearly they know what they want.
"You know what, I admit this is an operation. I have always known. Don't you think you know more than me. The difference between us is that you are deluded; you think wrong. You think just by standing on the sideline you are doing anything about it? No, you are not. But I, working my way up the ladder, who knows, maybe some day I can even do something about it!
"End of conversation. Go back to your desert. I am busy. You know, you are such a hypocrite: the movies are what we consume, we people of the operation, it is our reward and fodder for our having done another day's worth of hard work, another day of triumphant operation conducting, and you lap up this stuff that you so despise, even in your purported desolate existence? You know, because of this hypocrisy of yours I just discovered, I conclude everything you just said is wrong. What you said is all nonsense. Bye. And do not contact me again."
But I know I would. He is my brother and alter-ego after all.
And I would say to him: "Bro, I need my telescope into the operation. Do not blame me. I know I am being a voyeur, what you might even consider an impotent voyeur, but I am just not of the temperament for the operation. Maybe that is the reason that I never turned. You can blame me for the grandstanding that is because of my incapability of even making myself do the operation's work, but heed the logos I want to make known to you, and do not let it be discounted by the mortal being I am.
"You've grown up, my dear friend, no doubt. I've seen your growing up, just as you have seen mine. You sound you knew what you want. I only hope it is really what you want. You say you see more clearly which implies you have always had an inkling. But no one could possibly know it before he has an education, which is administered by the world, but ultimately interpreted by himself. You have chosen the lens you are wearing, but you can always make another choice, and it is never too late."
***
This film really made me think of this high school classmate and friend of mine. We have not been in contact for what I consider a very long time. Yet the uncanny similarity is not lost in the least bit to me between him and the antagonist of the film -
How someone who once did a PhD, wanted to teach, to write books, and to win the Nbl Prz, is sucked into the operation, and in his fight against its indiscriminate all-devouring internecine destructiveness, triumphed a Pyrrhic triumph, abandoning his last thread of innocence and becoming himself a captain of the operation's own self-perpetuity.
Neither was idealistic in the first place. Both placed glitz (that is why the Nbl Prz) over substance, stylishness over simpleness, and how other people think of him over how he thinks of himself.
Yet neither was a natural born killer, a cold-blooded purebred operative of the operation. Both still has humanity left, only that it might not shine through or even occur to them anymore. Ironically, at the same time they are not being ashamed for their lack of it, they make justifications for their having more of it, their being more humane than others.
The antagonist even used the very action, off-shoring, which profaned humanity in both his own country and others', to pretend his love for all mankind and to feign his doing God's work.
Contrary to what people often think, globalization, instead of being the cure of poverty, is actually the true cause of it. It was never driven by the "invisible hand" even if such a thing ever existed. It was driven by geo-political reality and the innate cancerous expansionist framework of the modern Western civilization.
As how a cancer works, the Western civilization could only survive as long as it can expand (its expression of the day is through economic expansion). The moment the host cannot sustain its growth anymore, the cancer dies along with the host.
The rapaciousness and ruthlessness of the banks in the film illustrates well the advancement of this cancer. In its wake, no one gains anything of value, except for the vain and ephemeral glitz, but as it passes, everywhere are littered the dead bodies of everyone.
Had the countries been left to develop on their own, they would never be forced to compete with the lowest denominator of wages, and they would never be forced to build nuclear ICBMs instead of investing in better living conditions for their people.
Even after they had joined the operation, the lion's share of the profits has never been given back to their workers, not even to the collaborating compradors, not even to the governments themselves of the exporting countries, it is used to buy "peace" from the "super power", or in more uglier terms, to buy the protection of the neighbourhood mafiosi who has an overwhelming power and lust to destroy, and thus runs the whole racket.
This is what Capitalism has come to. A shake-down.
As it stands, the operation is all powerful, and it will be in the foreseeable future. No one can be spared, either of its destructiveness, or of his own complicity. But it will not sustain. Its day of reckoning will come.
Fatalistic as it sounds, we cannot afford to be existentialists. We need to fight, and we have to win - our very survival depends on it; the cancer must be stopped, or the host dies.
***
I am amazed by the film. I've watched a lot of them, though now not nearly as frequently as then. I would attest, a film of such political incisiveness is hard to come by.
Costa-Gavras is the director of the film, whom I admit, in all my previous film-watching career, I have never come across once. I looked him up. Natrually, a man of such intellectual stature and insight would be perpetually kept in obscurity. Neither notoriety nor fame. Apparent mediocrity, or better yet, obscurity, is the seal of choice against such dangerous minds.
Sure, a better seal is death, but that has often been reserved for the clear and present danger, though nowadays the lines are murky.
Costa-Gavras has filmed a dozen films, spanning half a century, most of which are about politics, and provocative politics at that. See his films, and walk on the road of facing the truth courageously, instead of only facing your own self-interests and just the 5 minutes of it.
