Reggio Was Right-- Koyaanisqatsi

My father went to school at Bard College in New York state, about two hours from New York City. After graduating college he worked as a bartender in NYC for about a year. When I was about 12-years-old, I asked him about his adventures as a bartender. He told me of his hilarious friends who shared an apartment with him, and of his gradual honing of his street smart knowledge (i.e. after working a long night at the bar he would wear some raggedy clothes, as to not attract muggers and such). The one thing that he said that resonated with me the most was when he told me that, despite the huge population in NYC, the city could be one of the loneliest places in the world.

I know what my father meant now, and I knew what he meant then, yet it is still hard for me to get my head around his statement. Obviously if you did not know someone in a city of a huge populace, then it could be extremely lonely, but one question remains-- why? Why did I feel so alone today in the North Carolina airport as I went through security to board my flight to New Orleans? Why did people in the airport only communicate with strangers to say "sorry," or "excuse me," if they had bumped into each other by accident.

Everyone seemed so robotic in that security line today-- just like the people crossing the street and riding the escalators in an emotionless manner in the film Koyaanisqatsi. Let me add that I'm not trying to put myself up on a pedestal, I realize that I'm human too. I also realize that in that security line I was just as robotic as anyone else. And that scares me. What also scares me are the clone-like neighborhoods that I saw from the airplane window as my flight left Charlotte. I say "clone-like" because each house looked exactly the same, sure the neighborhoods were arranged slightly differently, but does that really matter? The landscapes, the cities, the houses in rows-- they all were too similar to the horrendous computer chip-to-city comparisons in Koyaanisqatsi.

I'm trying to piece this puzzle together. The first piece of the puzzle is the false perception of individuality and freedom in the U.S.-- how can we be individually free if we are mental slaves? The corporations who run America also run our news networks. Did you know that Disney owns ABC News? Did you know that Time Warner owns CNN? Did you know that General Electric owns a part of both NBC and MSNBC? If we watch any of these news channels, hell, if we watch any news channel, then we only know what that individual corporation wants us to know.

Now look, I'm no genius, so I don't know how to even begin to solve the problems mentioned in this blog. I'm aware that I'm damn lucky that I live in the U.S., and I do mean DAMN lucky. I could be living in a third world country like Haiti, and that's not what I want. I just want people to wake up. And maybe the first step to waking up is forcing oneself out of that drone state that I saw in people at the airport. A good goal to maintain is to avoid complacency. Complacency is what our government wants, and it's definitely what the major corporations that own our government want.

The more mechanical-esque we become, the less we'll be able to connect with one another. The less we're able to connect with one another, the less freedom we'll have. That's how I see it, but please feel free to comment on this blog-- I'm not trying to preach to anyone, rather just for someone to hear me. If you disagree or agree with me, then tell me why. I'm sure that many of you have better insights in regards to this subject than I do.