I was at the Pride parade at San Francisco yesterday. I saw a lot of things, a lot of ways in which people were trying to express themselves, a lot of which did not make any sense to me. But then there are a lot of things I do not know or understand. I mean I understand freedom of speech and expression, but what is the point of standing stark naked in the middle of the road while people around you are staring at you and taking pictures of you. This is not a rhetoric question. I am really asking. Unless being naked stands for feeling liberated and since the theme of the parade was freedom, it seemed fitting, but still kinda ridiculous.
So I did have fun and some form of weird social and cultural experience, it kind of reminded me of the kind of procession and demonstration going on in Iran. Even they are fighting for their freedom, freedom from the theocracy controlled by the religious leaders, freedom to make their votes count, freedom to have a democracy. And when I thought of that, this parade at SF seemed so superficial. It is not that I have anything against gay rights. On the contrary, I believe everybody has the right to do whatever they want as long as they are not hurting somebody else (but then again I cannot discuss the fact of where to draw the line on hurting somebody else). What I am trying to say is that asking for the freedom to choose your sexuality is a fair thing to demand. But it kinda loses any substance when compared to fighting for you actual freedom. But then it is human nature to always ask for more. On one hand, you have people who are getting beat up on the road and getting tear gas thrown at but still not budging, and then you have people who are getting invited to the white house and have an audience with the president and are still discontent.
I mean it is only fair to be discontent when you do not get what you want, but looking at all this, I have this weird feeling. It is something I am not able to explain. I feel it is fine that if you are just doing the parade with the desire to party, do whatever you want, it is your day. I am a big party animal myself. But what I hate is the so-called anti-establishment crowd who want to change the world by doing pot and playing guitar in their moms' basement. I think you have guessed right - I am talking about the ridiculous hippie crowd. A really good friend of mine aptly summed them as "They want to fight against what's happening in Tibet, but cannot point on the map where in the world Tibet is".
But then I feel I should not be saying anything about them - I am not doing anything about what is happening in Iran or give too much sh*t about it. I read about it, feel a little sad about it, have a sense of admiration towards the people fighting for freedom, but after that I simply go about with my day and Iran is lost somewhere in the plethora of information that goes into my brain. So who am I judge.
But I feel somebody should. Somebody who is deserving enough to do so, but then if somebody is deserving enough, he is probably too busy actually dealing with the problem rather than dealing with how people react to it or perceive it. However, if enough people actually care about their fellow human beings, about people they do not know and probably would never meet, the weak law of large number kinda says that eventually you will have somebody who not only cares but go farther and does something about it. But I do not think that growing long hair and sitting in circles is ever going to work.
