The Kite Runner
My life is slipping away from me - I have nightmares about utilisation figures, resource shortages, ICAs, demanding project managers etc. Actually, it's pretty funny how consuming work really is. More specifically, this corporate lifetstyle stifling my creativity and truncating time that I can spend at the gym, with family or friends and me time! On the other hand, I've had a chance to do some really awesome mentoring programs that I will write up about later.
Anyway, I digress. I wanted to write about this book I had finished this week - the Kite Runner. Set in Afghanistan and later the USA about two childhood friends. I don't want to give away too much of the story other than to say it's a story of atonement (and not the stupid kind like in Ian McEwan's book). I really love politics you know, and how it affects people's lives. Without over-analysing myself too much :p, I think the fact that I started my life at the end of Vietnam war, the effects it had on my family, the fact we became refugees in a camp in Malaysia and eventually were granted asylum in Australia - all of these things make me empathise with people in war-torn countries. Anyway, the book is set against Afghanistan's turbulent recent history—the 1978 civil war, the Soviet invasion, the rise of the Taliban opposition, the tension between the Pashtuns and the Shiite Hazara - how these things affected these two boys lives and their families.
It's a well-written simple book to read - I read it quickly over two nights. It's profoundly sad, the pages are tear-stained (I don't know how I will handle the movie). But I'm not entirely happy with the tidy endy. I don't know.... let me know what you think. I'd give it 3.5 stars because the ending ruined it for me.
It’s so depressing to think about war - we have a world history of atrocities committed against humanity. And when you think about it quite simplistically, and I try to keep in mind that every conflict in every part of the world is different in its own way, it comes down to power struggles and economic interests at the cost of human lives. Sometimes I laugh at my naivety but maybe if Russia permits Chechen independence, if Israel permits Palestinian independence and if China permits Taiwanese independence…I mean who knows? What will be the outcome? Seen as an appeasement but somehow, the idea of not addressing other people’s grievances and understanding their motivations, it doesn’t work as a long term strategy, and certainly if we want to seek real peace and an end to carnage, doesn’t empathy help? It’s not like we all carry around these hate genes, these fixed biological factors, that make it impossible for us to co-exist in harmony with one another. I think that’s what is most sad for me, that the possibility of peace is real, well I truly whole-heartedly believe in it. I don’t know world politics, ongoing conflicts, this endless cycle of violence, they all do my head in and makes me feel helpless. Especially, when you switch on the television and all you see are these innocent children crying and covered in blood. It’s so far removed from the men who sit around conference tables making decisions that impact on civilian lives. It breaks my heart every time *sigh*
2 comments:
i don't know lynn... there is a chinese saying that at the beginning of man, his nature is good (and i guess the implication is that it's the world that corrupts him)
but i take the opposite view.. i believe every person is bad and is only taught to be good...
it's pessimistic i know, but what's to say that those little kids who were crying and covered in blood won't make the same decisions the politicians are making if they were put into the same position later??
it's just human nature
Hey Ziming or sango (I can't figure out who it is lol)... I tend to disagree. The same little kids will be inclined to make the same decisions as it will be ingrained in them from a young age to hate the enemy. For example, palestinians and israelis. Children are taught to hate and it's not hard too when your friends & families or people you know are killed by a tank or a suicide bomber. Violence begets violence. So I really do genuinely believe as a whole, humans are corrupted by the world.
I could do a blog about nature vs nuture :-) but I think beyond the simplistic dichotomy between heredity & environment, all behaviour comes out of an interaction between the two. And we can always rise above our nature and our nurture.
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