now they call it myanmar

2002-08-04|1:11 p.m.

I started reading Burmese Days and I am already in love with it. It is one of the books that I leave at work to read during the lunch hour. Too bad too, because I wish that I was reading it this minute. I did find the whole novel online though for anyone interested. I just can�t read books online. It is too painful for my eyes for some reason.

Here are some excellent lines that I have found from it already:

�No European cares anything about proofs. When a man has a black face, suspicion IS proof.�

�Why, of course, the lie that we're here to uplift our poor black brothers instead of to rob them. I suppose it's a natural enough lie. But it corrupts us; it corrupts us in ways you can't imagine. There's an everlasting sense of being a sneak and a liar that torments us and drives us to justify ourselves night and day. It's at the bottom of half our beastliness to the natives. We Anglo-Indians could be almost bearable if we'd only admit that we're thieves and go on thieving without any humbug.�

I brought up the book because it is amazing how perceptive Orwell was. I would use the word �prophetic,� but I am not sure that he was really going for that. Even in 1984 I would argue that he wasn�t trying to foretell the future. The date 1984 is simply the year that he finished the book, 1948, with the numbers exchanged. He was unleashing the realities of Communism before the backdrop of Europe post WWII.

See, that is something I don�t understand. A lot of people I know mistakenly think that Orwell was a pro-Communist thinker. This is because they are making the mistake that many people did during Orwell�s time. So many people were pro-Communist because they believed in the positive ideas of socialism. And they failed to see how corrupt actual Communism was. And 1984 was Orwell�s response to them. The intellectuals of Orwell�s time were individuals who had fallen so deeply into theories and concepts that they had removed themselves from reality. And it still happens today. And it happens to me and I am trying to avoid it.

The other day driving home I realized that whenever I drive near a rich person in an expensive car I give them a dirty look. I wonder to myself, �How can they live that way when millions go hungry every night?� And I indulge. I pass the buck (nice pun, eh?) and fail to see how I fit in this. I live in the 5th largest economy in the world, California, and I eat every night, buy the clothes I want, and treat myself in excess all the time. And I am mad that some rich white lady owns a BMW and pays 50 dollars to get her hair cut? Why? I know it is inevitable. The sad thing is what I do. Or what I don�t. I�ll never be able to do enough. And I am not saying that I need to beat myself up. I am just saying that I need to keep things into perspective. It is almost cool these days to hate the rich. But, how much hypocrisy am I willing to swallow in order to do it?

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