fiat lux

Read Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat. Although Friedman tries the sell the idea (or rather, the slogan) that the world is becoming flat. I tend to see this book as an urge for American to maintain their own superior position in economy, using the means that they once used during the USSR was still there. It’s just that the Russians are replaced here with Indians and Chinese. Friedman seems to over sell too much that we have all already known (Dell’s supply chain and all those flashy-flashy IT bling-bling read soooo dull: we don’t really need an example that’s got repeated over and over again to make his point clear).

Friedman tends to oversimplify the geopolitical issues in the Middle East, and attributes the antagonism towards the developed world a kind of Nietzschean ressentiment (although he never mentions that notion) and in the end he calls for “hope, not looking back” (my paraphrase).

Friedman is a seller of optimism. According to him, imagination opens up a better world. But he fails to mention the worst case scenario. And alas, we all know that even the optimism is not always rosy. In this regard, Ulrich Beck’s What Is Globalization? (Was ist Globalisierung?) and Giddens’s Runaway World may serve a better, “balanced” and more profound reflection on the phenomenon that Friedman tries to repackage under another name.

lukhnos :: Jan.21.2006 :: opinion :: 1 Comment »

Kerim Friedman and his wife, Shashwati Talukdar, have recently made a new documentary on the Chhara community, formerly under the British rule labeled as “the criminal tribe,” and their theatre. According to Kerim’s blog:

Acting Like a Thief is a short film about the Budhan Theatre of Chharanagar. Starting with playwright Dakxin Bajrange discussing his arrest , the film brings us inside the lives of a dedicated group of young actors and their families as they discuss what it means to be a “born criminal” and how theater changed their lives.

This film can be downloaded from the film’s official site. And please support their fund-raising campaign that finances their on-going project (of which Acting Like a Thief is a part) !

lukhnos :: Oct.29.2005 :: opinion :: Comments Off