Day 446: Re-Look-See
November 17, 2006 - Filed Under We Are Not Ok, articles, city planning, culture-society-history, government, new orleans, recovery
Lately, I’ve taken to seriously considering Citizen Revolution. By that, I don’t mean anything on the order of pitchforks, attack ladders, Mao Tse Tung or Castro, but a very studious and sane re-examination of our constitution and founding documents on the part of a well-educated and conscious citizenry.
Loki reminded me of Becky Houtman’s latest post entitled Representation. Her words flesh out the loss of proper citizen representation in post-Katrina New Orleans; I may be optimistic and such a beast may never have lived here even before the storm.
… those living close to New Orleans are not adequate “representatives” of citizens in the uninhabitable or barely inhabitable portions of our city, however well-intentioned (or not). Public hearings, meetings, and comment periods are indispensable to democratic government, but they’re never a substitute for proportional representation.
Sometimes, especially times like ours, the representation allowed for by our constitutions and charters - the mayors, city councils, governors, senators, representatives and presidents - aren’t enough; legislation doesn’t conveniently exist for the level of public involvement required for a whole region’s reconstruction.
Becky speaks for the diaspora and their silence, self-imposed or not, in the rebuilding of New Orleans. Regardless of their desire to return to this city, there is no conduit for the input of the displaced. As for the people who have returned, we see more people at Saints games than at the polls or planning meetings that readily impact the future of this city, even the continued stay of the Saints here. But, is that entirely the fault of the people or a direct result of a system designed not to engage their participation and answers they already have?
Despite its status as Broken capital of America, the lack of representation here is not a local epidemic, contained by Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi (or the Gulf of Mexico as a southern boundary, if you so choose). America as a whole worships complacence, and this is only encouraged by a system ostensibly set in stone by our Founding Fathers. Not so. Bill Maher, my favorite Libertarian, writes in A Re-Look-See At The Constitution:
Oh, Congress looks like America — we’ve got blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and whatever else is in Barack Obama. But diversity of thought? … Right, like 66-year-old grandmother of five Nancy Pelosi is some raving, twig-eating Marxist ideologue. If only she were … Nancy Pelosi isn’t going to try to legalize drugs or socialize hospitals or really tax gasoline or tell the Pentagon to cut its bloated, corrupt budget.
There’s no out-of-the-box thinking in this country. If we were really looking for a new direction, we’d not just change Congress, we’d have another Constitutional Convention, as Jefferson suggested we do. Jefferson said: “Let us provide in our Constitution for its revision. . . every 19 or 20 years. . . so that it may be handed on, with periodical repairs, from generation to generation.” … But that’s Jefferson’s phrase: periodical repairs. This thing needs periodical repairs, but it hasn’t been in the shop for 219 years. Of course it’s belching oil. Literally.
America had its chance to diversify and radically alter the face of its government. At the hyperlocal level, New Orleans has a lot more leeway and has every reason to think outside the box. But, it doesn’t. For, as Becky suggests, the representation afforded by our current system of local government is insufficient. New Orleans cannot reform or re-form within the boundaries of a set of rules too outmoded to be useful. While lame duck is the political term-du-jour, it readily applies to many local-, state- and federal-government-sanctioned efforts here.
Constant communication is key. A couple of suggestions to overcome this feeling of uselessness on both sides of the apparent fence:
1. Make friends with your government representatives and continuously instill in their heads the idea of progressive change. Conscientious and involved individuals may get more mileage out of their effort by teaming with members of City Council and Government, constantly bringing them back to reality and offering them the tools and ideas with which to break down the barriers of the box.
2. As we have recently shown, the power of citizen journalism is tremendous. It would not be inappropriate in the New Orleans of today for government members and their contractors (such as UNOP, etc.) to become more active on local and diasporic blogs. If they listen and respond, they may get a better idea of how to help shape things. Communication need not be relegated to overstuffed meeting rooms and offices.
In so many ways, our hands are tied, but we move forth at the level of neighborhood, planning district, school and hard-forged community bonds. This is not enough; the slow pace of decision-making puts viable recovery in great peril. We have to garner more of the power we voted for. Within our heads and hands lies the future of New Orleans. And the future of America.
Day 354: Why I Blog
August 17, 2006 - Filed Under articles, books, citizen journalism, computing & internet, new orleans, project gutenberg, public domain, wordpress
The mission of VatulBlog is as follows: To leave behind a free, searchable repository of data, research and a somewhat coherent set of my thoughts about geology, computing, the internet, Project Gutenberg, culture navigation and, lately, living in New Orleans.
In 1991, this high schooler, who didn’t foresee weblogs, began to write email missives to friends on the topics of politics and science education. The ones that resembled essays were translated into HTML/XML/PHP and archived on old incarnations of my website. Proto-bloggerette then found Blogspot in 2002 (reluctantly) and, two years ago, WordPress (eagerly). Each discussion of import that dozed in the annals of my various email Inboxes was funneled into a Maitri post and out it went.
Why the painful details of my blog-volution? Information is power. Knowledge is power. When I find potentially-useful information and create it through discussion or thought, I share it so that many learn from it (including me, who always learns more from further discussion).
In a recent email, Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg said, “One believes knowledge is power means don’t share it and I remark that this leaves a world filled with darkness. The other believes that knowledge is power means share it, and I remark that this leaves a world filled with light. ’Tis better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.” The power of my knowledge is in giving it away so that we all know that much more, the world is that much better to live in. For me, there is no money or personal power to be gained from information archival and dissemination. VatulBlog is the online manifestation of that ethic.
This philosophy was underscored during and after Katrina. A displaced resident of New Orleans and a loud civic voice, I had no stomach for superficial news and what Christiane Amanpour describes well as “happy-camper war-and-disaster-zone travelogue” (HT, Ray). I was confused and frustrated from not knowing what was going on with the city, so I pacified myself by stepping in as a reporter and turning VatulBlog into a bullhorn in the NOLA PA system network. This was my catharsis and each time I received an encouraging comment, letter or phone call from an anonymous émigré, it reminded me that I was not alone, others were suffering a lot more and I had to keep writing.
My blog was a single candle. Soon, I found other candles like WetBankGuide, GulfSails and Gentilly Girl and the shining beacon that is Think New Orleans, which shares a lot of my own standards on knowledge work, information, content, archival and sharing. The fire caught from there. Writing about New Orleans over and above their jobs, not as their jobs - the woes, the recovery, the administrative blunders from the federal government on down and our own exploration of identity and the nature of self in a city hit by an unnatural disaster - all of the NOLA blogs linked to from my site share that conscience and that personal touch. A greater free, searchable, linked repository of news, data, research and a somewhat coherent set of thoughts on the re-discovery of ourselves.
It was also through this blog that I found Sepia Mutiny, the vibrant and thoughtful salve to that within me which is Indian, Kuwaiti, American and everything in between.
As I told someone yesterday, “One cannot talk about the truth of anything unless one has lived it, and I cannot for the life of me begin to see the truth [in New Orleans] even while going through this for almost a year now.” Sixteen years after fleeing Kuwait, I don’t know its truth. VatulBlog is not here to give you the truth. It is here to provide information so that you make your own choice. Having a sea of options and viewpoints makes a more enlightened human being. What you make of it is the truth, your truth.
I don’t suggest that one ought not to make money from writing, even if it is using the blog medium. After all, Chris Cooper and Robert Block are Rising Tide’s keynote speakers and they are making money off a book which we support. In fact, I’ve purchased the book, as I did those of Brinkley, Ray (yes, our Ray), Codrescu, Rose and Piazza. But, these people are professionals, the children of New Orleans, its writers and ambassadors even before the storm and providing a lasting chunk of wonderfully-written and researched information heretofore unseen.
New Orleans is not my domain, anyone on this planet can write about it, but I would encourage those who know it the most and can offer original perspective and news that really helps, whether it makes them money or not. VatulBlog and my principles are completely within my jurisdiction, however, and I cannot give space within it to those who wish to make money from what has already been done and will continue to happen here.
A deep bow to Project Gutenberg, Sepia Mutiny, Think New Orleans, the New Orleans bloggers and every real information seeker and giver on earth.
Day 296: The Earth Is A Process, As Are We
June 20, 2006 - Filed Under articles, culture-society-history, geology, gizmos & hacks, government, new orleans, science & technology
nola.com: Rebuilding Needs Science, Report Says
[A 20-person panel of the American Geophysical Union, consisting of earth and space scientists] recommended improved hurricane and storm surge forecasting and a reliance on high-quality scientific data to guide the rebuilding of New Orleans and other hard-hit areas of the Gulf Coast.
The report also recommends … periodic scientific assessments of the reconstruction effort … and that residents be educated to understand “that the earth is dynamic and that life-altering changes can and do occur in human time scales.”
Full AGU report on Hurricanes and the U.S. Gulf Coast: Science and Sustainable Rebuilding
As a geoscientist, as with any profession, it is easy to forget that there is a vast gap between what you know and what laypeople don’t. It wasn’t until this morning at the auto mechanic’s that I fully appreciated this gaping void. As Mark pointed at various parts of my engine and went over the work he is to embark on, I wondered if people stare at me with an “Ok, sure, whatever, good for you” look when I explain to them the finer nuances of plate tectonics, coastal subsidence or the water table. Can the requirements for living sound so abstruse?
If I chide people for failing to learn about their immediate natural environment and the consequences of that failure, they have every right to snarl back at my ignorance of the workings of a fuel injection system and the fallout from that.
However, as a scientist, I know that the brain isn’t simply a memory bank, it can also learn how to learn … anything. If required to understand the functions of a distributor cap or a bellows boot, I am confident in my ability to absorb that knowledge. Additionally, I actively trust and rely on my mechanic to educate and warn me about things going awry.
Therefore, the success of a car depends on a dynamic process, a give and take - a competent mechanic who communicates with a concerned customer who in turn is willing to learn and do his/her part.
Reading the above article, I felt that same need for a give and take relationship, this time between earth scientists and the people who occupy hurricane-threatened coastal lowlands. Scientists cannot talk until we are blue in the face, while the citizenry ignores us and hurtles towards sure failure. Conversely, talking at the layperson and telling them to take certain measures, even via policy, is equally futile and disrespectful. There are several reasons for this:
- Environmental / natural hazard awareness is not a social value in all American communities. Until these communities and their leaders find value in the value, science-based communication and laws will find no purchase.
- It dawned on me (thanks to a cogent discussion with Jim Davis) that the true cost of any natural or manmade hazard is that it is borne by the public sector, not that laypeople don’t know anything about earth sciences.
- Science-fueled policy is met with distrust when said policy reeks of decision paralysis, incomplete solutions, ineffective compromises and priority problems, thanks to politicians and their attendant bureaucracy.
I reiterate my original question: Can the requirements for living sound so abstruse? Yes, they can. Earth science communication will miss a social target if not presented in a utilitarian manner and if the infrastructure of that society does not promote sustainable living options. It is the earth science imperative to educate young, old, lawmakers and ourselves alike, explain why that education is necessary and recruit educators from the pool of laypeople. Once they understand, who better to spread the message?
My new approach to teaching earth science or answering geology questions is to forget the theory-followed-by-practical-application linearity of science. But, that’s what science is, isn’t it? What are we if not theoreticians who then conduct experiments to (dis)prove our theories? And what isn’t tremendously cool about that? While it is simply thrilling to discuss the various forms of subsidence and the opening of the Gulf of Mexico and the overburden of deltaic and turbiditic sediments and faulting and structural collapse … STOP. You’ve lost your audience. In earth science education, the value of the learning precedes the concepts and definitions.
This is what I mean: Start by standing at a collapsed levee against the backdrop of a badly-flooded neighborhood. Hold up moldy teddy bears and water-warped photographs if necessary. Why did this have to happen? Explain the collapse process, the I-wall, the type of soil that underpins this area, where that soil came from (marsh drainage), overall subsidence of the area and then the time over which these earth processes occur. Finally, point again to the collapsed levee and to all of the destroyed homes that decay further in the hot noonday sun of the New Orleans summer and say, “This is why curiosity towards earth science can help you.” Notice that I don’t say knowledge of earth science, but instead promote an inclination towards learning. Help your audience own the science.
If the earth is dynamic, so are we. As the earth does not remain static, so cannot our attitudes towards our relationship with it. This understanding then spills over into how we as scientists educate ourselves and pass on the knowledge to the communities in which we live, work and raise our children.
For if we are unwilling to listen for a rattling sound in the engine and take the car into the mechanic’s immediately so that he may replace the water pump before the car kicks the bucket, how are we to spread a broader understanding of and responsibility towards earth science?
Day 115: Pre- And Post-K Violence Against Women; Reducing Agents
December 21, 2005 - Filed Under articles, crime, culture-society-history, katrina, new orleans
Violence Against Women Before And After Katrina: It amazes me the crimes people, including NOPD, are willing to believe happened in the wake of Katrina. But, what angers me are the acts of violence faced with incredulity, namely rapes reported by the supposed victims themselves. And I say “supposed” because, unfortunately, there are liars who make it hard on the real victims.
NPR does a New Orleans “human” piece before 6:30AM almost everyday and manages to depress the hell out of me before the day has even begun - hey, at least it’s informative, better than Houston schock-jocks badmouthing New Orleanian evacuees and the price to pay before receiving the news of the day. Today, I woke up to Morning Edition investigating the veracity of the rape claims mentioned above (More Stories Emerge of Rapes in Post-Katrina Chaos). Through the course of the show, my brain performed its usual cautious fencesitting on such issues. However, this statement made by Judy Benitez, of the Louisiana Rape Crisis Group stood out to help beget a clearer view:
“The fact that something wasn’t reported to the police doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” Benitez says. “We know about all the other things that happened, all the thefts, all the robberies. There was all kinds of crime taking place on a much higher level than usual. Why would we think there was less rape typical of any given week in the city? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Regardless of whether an individual woman was raped or not, logic dictates that the number of acts of violence against women could not have decreased while other types of crime were on the increase. Our horribly-understaffed and strained police force had shooters and looters to contend with, and could not thoroughly patrol flooded neighborhoods and what they thought were safe havens. Yet, rape is a serious human violation, too, and leaves an indelible mark on mother, sister, wife, daughter and friend. At times of crisis and lawlessness, women need additional protection.
“We’re not downsizing anything,” [commander of the sex crimes unit with the New Orleans Police Department, Lt. David] Benelli says. “I’m telling you the number of reported rapes we had.
“I admit that rapes are underreported … I know more sexual assaults took place. I’ve expressed many times that we’re willing to investigate any sexual assaults that happened in this city at any time. We can only deal with what we know.”
While the police can only act on and the justice system can only prosecute that which they have evidence against, there has to be a way that unreported rapes are statistically recorded in the system, especially for this period of time in New Orleans history. The fact that Lt. Benelli “knows more sexual assaults took place” should count for something in the final reporting and prevention plans for the future. Otherwise, we should simply add Misogynists Who Look The Other Way to the growing list of derisive labels applied to New Orleanians today.
According to the NPR story, a series of rapes allegedly occurred in my greater neighborhood, Irish Channel, in a housing complex for the aged. The proximity of the attacks strikes a nerve and reminds me of the fragility of our safety and presumed civilized existence. Don’t even get me started on how a lot of this could have been prevented had the military shown up immediately after the hurricane hit. There is no pardon for that botch in a gaffe in a failure.
—
Reducing Agents: Why would I want to win a Katrina t-shirt?
“Enter to win the NOLA.com Katrina comemorative T-Shirt today!”
Arguably, this is an advertising move on the part of the T-P to attract readers and to keep them interested in the news. [What's boring about it?]
There is also a certain feeling of kinship involved in this very American phenomenon - the wearer of a post-K New Orleans t-shirt shows ownership, participation and pride concerning the disaster and recovery efforts. Yet, if you know me, you know how I feel about causes reduced to t-shirts, rubber bracelets and slogans.
I give this one three-and-a-half out of five Bah Humbugs.
Big Men Cry
November 26, 2002 - Filed Under articles, government, kuwait
- Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035-1040
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give them that? Do not hand out death and judgment so easily.”
- Gandalf the Grey in The Fellowship Of The Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
It was August 2, 2002, twelve years to the day after Kuwait’s invasion by Iraq. With my feet firmly planted in a sand berm on the shore of the Arabian Gulf, I stared at Kuwait City awash in the light of the blistering mid-morning sun. Nothing had changed. A few new buildings and parking garages that replaced ones that were damaged in the war. It was very hard to imagine that, little more than a decade ago, this place was a war zone and that where I stood was a treacherous field of mines. I looked down at my feet. Had the liberating soldiers removed every last one of them? What would a prosthesis feel like if I lost the real thing in a freak explosion? Would I die or would my legs have to be amputated? Which is worse? Sufficiently burned by the sweltering heat, I shook myself back to reality and made my way back to the beachfront apartment complex where I was staying with my parents. Why we were back in Kuwait, I do not know. Maybe it was the long-harbored need to return to the place called home, maybe it was because of nothing else to do, maybe this part of the world was at peace again.
Mulling over our strange decision to move back to this hole of heat, I walked up to a huge crowd of people gathered outside the apartment building we had recently moved into. The same was true of all the dwellings around us. If there were a biblical exodus, this is what it would have looked like. Almost everyone was weighed down with bags overflowing with valuables and essentials and appeared to be preparing for a long trip. I found my mother in the midst and ran up to her to ask what was going on. And, where was dad? My mother calmly told me that Kuwait was in trouble yet again. The government had just announced another invasion by the Iraqis and that each man, woman, and child were for themselves to make it out of the country before the bombs dropped and the tanks rolled in all over again. Where was dad? It was explained to me that my father, not wanting to be a hostage a second time, had taken it upon himself to find a reliable and fast vehicle to get us out of the country before the proverbial camel dung hit the fan. With that, my mother quickly walked away from me to console a neighbor who had begun a slow dance of hysteria in fear of the impending disaster.
I took off in pursuit of my father. He would not be far from me at a time when all of us needed to be together. Whatever happened, my family would be as one and nothing would separate us this time. Not Saddam Hussein, not a bomb, not a quest for a Hummer that would take us across the desert into freedom. I ran like I had never before, and I ran and ran and kept running until I found my father bargaining with a car dealer, price-gouging opportunists they are even at dire times like these. They were close to a deal and we were going to get out of this infernal country. Never had I seen my father with such brimstone in his eyes. So determined, so angry, and so full of love and hope for our survival.
And, that’s when it hit me. D. D back home in the United States. I had to get through to him and let him know what was happening. Damned cell phone! The blasted piece of electronic garbage can never get reception when one absolutely needs it to. I ran out of the dealership and into the middle of a huge parking lot where I was bound to get good service. Dialing the fifty-digit number to connect to the United States, I heard D’s voice on the other end. I screamed into the phone, “Iraq is attacking again! Come get me! Do something, do anything! Let the government know *rumble* that American citizens are *big rumble* trapped here! Come get me! Come get me!” D was saying something back to me, but I could not hear it as the rumbling kept getting louder and louder. That is when I looked up, cell phone in hand, and saw a giant tsunami of flame working its way towards me. Taking in a sharp breath, I realized I was exactly where I didn’t want to be: in Kuwait, separated from my family, with a torrent of flame and shrapnel about to envelop me. I thought of my parents, my beautiful nieces, my D. I thought of the 28th birthday I would never live to see. I thought of how ridiculously beautiful the bright reds and oranges of the nearing conflagration looked against the cloudless blue of the summer sky. I thought of …
I woke up crying. Sitting up in bed, not a scream or a blank stare came from me, just tears pouring down my face. All I could get out of the cotton threads that passed for my vocal cords were the words, “They bombed Kuwait again, and they got my mother and father.” How odd it was to say that while realizing the soft warmth of my blue flannel sheets and D lying in bed next to me. How bizarre it was to have him wrap his strong arm around me. How strangely comforting it was to hear him say, “It was just a bad dream. It’s alright. It was just a bad dream. Go back to sleep.” Sleep? Perchance to dream? Going back to sleep was the last thing on my mind.
Days. It took days for me to get rid of the feeling of being burned alive without anyone there with me. The loneliness of death. The loneliness of dying in a war. I don’t think anyone is ever so alone. And I would not wish this on any being in the universe. No matter how many nightmares I have been through, I will never wish this on a 15 year-old Iraqi girl, nor will I wish this to come back to haunt her 12 years later. How many young Arabs wake up from these nightmares? How many of them have second and third leases on life? How many of them are as lucky as I am?
When Americans want to “lay the smack on Iraq,” I hope they realize that the Iraqi people pay for it with their lives and their sanity as they have for so many years. They pay the price of the trade embargos, the sanctions, the skirmishes and the wars, while Saddam Hussein lives as a king in a palace, not by one iota of his breath paying for what he did. How is justice served in the laying of the smack? How many smack-layings result in death and nightmares? Death and nightmares. Death and nightmares.
I did not move to America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, for this to continue.
Culture Review: The Dance Of SAFMOD
October 30, 2002 - Filed Under articles, culture-society-history, music
Portions of this article pertaining to Indian dance were published under the title “Sujatha Srinivasan dances for peace” in the October 2003 edition of Kutcheribuzz.com This is the full version.
At a time when every newspaper and television set heralds disaster, war, and some of the worst aspects of human nature, one often wonders where the good in us exists. Are we but instinctual creatures driven by fear and loathing? Or are we better than that, stronger than that, and more soulful than we lead ourselves to believe? Correspondingly, can we ever get along as beings of the same planet?
An experience such as CultureFlex presented by SAFMOD to launch Danceworks 2003 of the Cleveland Public Theater could not have come at a better time. Filled with cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary performances, the show displayed through pure art that it is alright for us to care for each other and the world around, and that the creative intensity within us still remains, hurt and sad, but nevertheless unmarred and undefeated.
What seemed like equally-spaced garbage bags greeted us from the dark stage at the beginning of the program. As these lumps began to writhe and emerge from their cocoons, I realized that they were the dancers themselves initially contorted to represent seeds in the ground that germinate and gain height as they are nourished with increasing light. Dressed in painted body suits, these physically-buff dancers writhed and twisted on stage to the extent that it blurred the distinction between their dance and plant growth. The troupe’s innovation showed as a few dancers glided onto the stage on stilts as redwoods, and others mangled their bodies further into balls, their arms and feet sticking out, representing nothing other than bushes with branches and leaves. The only word that repeated in my head was “wow” - what a creative and painstaking way to get an audience to identify with nature!
Another word that kept coming up was “versatile.” Not ones to box themselves into the category of minimalist acrobats, the next couple of numbers expressed the fresh faces and diversity of the entire dance company. The first of these was a youthful Maypole-esque piece - we can all live together one one planet and be happy - in colorful costumes. Fibonacci had me interested and tapping my toes from start to finish, as it showcased the main percussionist and his mathematically-precise skill with a gata (overturned earthen pot). Wonder how many in the audience realized that it was the Fibonacci sequence set to drum and dance.
Even after the intermission of heady wine, the piece entitled Ahimsa had my full attention. While being biased towards art forms that aesthetically fuse cultures and art philosophies, I particularly laud the choreographers of this piece for their ingenuity and collaboration. For an artist to share his or her artistic expression with another, without compromising its integrity in any way, shape or form, is a tribute to the artist as well as to the art form. Bharathanatyam dancer, Sujatha Srinivasan and Western Modern dancer, Young Park combined their expertise and their fellow dancers to create something of beauty and of meaning.
When people wish to kill one another over land, money, and religion, it was heartening to see that we can come together, work together, and live and play in harmony. This is the way the world should be; Ahimsa and the entire CultureFlex program imparted that message to us. It is gatherings such as this one that will give way to the understanding and peace that this world so deeply deserves.
Movie Review: A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
April 15, 2001 - Filed Under articles, movies/tv
Do not believe all that you see on the screen. Mesmerizing movies, made with sophisticated artistic vision, tend to control what people come away with about the central topic, but seldom contain the right answer to the question posed. A.I.: Artifical Intelligence is one such gorgeous and thought-provoking movie from the late Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg which, while heralding the drawbacks of artifical intelligence, is not fleshed out to the point where one can use it to argue the ethics of bioengineering.
Certain questions that beg asking: How much behavioral psychology theory was used in the making of this movie? Also, to what level was modern knowledge of Information Theory used in what Spielberg & Co. thought the future makers of artificial intelligence would use? True, the film is based on a book, but were gaps filled in so as to make a solid impact either way? I don’t think so.
We, human beings with souls, are constructs, too. We started out a certain way however many billion years ago and have evolved into what we are today. Yet, we are still constructs that cannot be understood as simply as in the movie, and can definitely not be placed neatly into the form of a bio-plastic carcass. Again, human beings, in the film world and reality, have not reached any level of understanding of different cultures or creatures that would promote us to welcome artificial intelligence into our mainstream. A.I.: Artifical Intelligence’s flesh fair can be compared to the treatment of gladiators in the Roman Empire, the “witches” of the 17th century, or the African slaves of the western world. The attitude of the spectators at the fair is that of jingoistic natives of any country who are reluctant to share their space with anyone different and possibly more capable than them. The technology is willing, but the heart is weak, so to speak. All the way from the pedestrian to the biotechnologist, at the biological, neurological, and sociological levels, we do not yet possess the intellectual, spiritual, psychological, and, above all, emotional understanding of ourselves and each other to accept artifical intelligence. When are we going to truly know ourselves? Only then can we construct an artifical intelligence which we as an enlightened race can understand and support.
Perhaps that is what the movie wants us to come away with. But if it is a morality play that intends to encourage us not to create life forms in the non-traditional manner, let it suffice to say that A.I.: Artificial Intelligence sets up a premature straw man in order to knock down the advantages of virtual humanity, which has never to date taken the form of a seven-year old, blond waif who pulls maternal heartstrings to get to its audience. For the purpose of dissuading us from playing god, The Island Of Dr. Moreau was more than enough.
