it was a regular january morning, I was driving myself for 66km (42 miles) to my modern slavery workplace. The road is near empty and my only companion is the sun struggling to shine behind the gloomy clouds. But in a few minutes I’ll be fighting to pass through choking traffic.
This magical and beautiful moment, is most probably my only uplifting moment of the day, only followed by hours of sighs, thoughtless eating and restless sleep. It makes you wonder, how did we as humans, accept the situation we’re in today. We give up our humanity and for what? Money, my job is not even that rewarding. This directly links me up to the lyrics of my well beloved Pink Floyd piece: Shine on you crazy diamonds. I of course refer to the part : “Did they get you to trade, your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? Cold comfort for change? Did you exchange? a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?” And I can’t but burst in fury, who the hell are THEY ! If it isn’t anyone but us. Our modern society sense of achievement, the necessity compelling the lot of us to act in a specific coordinated way, all over the globe. I am proudly tunisian, we are a small struggling meditteranean country, and even though I am an actual modern slave, people always tend to say that I should be lucky, because I found a job whereas my equals are unemployed. That is how it is down here, work is not the reason to live, but it is the only means to survive. I had the chance for a while to be an intern in France and I noticed how things are different in the way of thinking between Paris and Tunis. What people over there, consider as granted and as a right, you need to fight for it here. That is the only way to put it, we fight to live by the standards that are considered as minimal elsewhere. It is funny how the Hollywood movies depict being poor in the US. Because that is how a middle class Tunisian family lives and we are thankful and happy by the situation. This kind of opposition triggers a question inevitably: I have to be a slave and work myself till I die to maintain an acceptable level of life. But others don’t, but they don’t even realize it. Because what we feel and how we look towards things is highly, if not entirely, influenced by the surrounding community. And this is where you realize that everything you took for granted, for 100% correct and there’s no question about it is nothing but an illusion. I am going to quote one of my favourite video games character “Nothing is true, everything is permitted”. Yes my kind sir, nothing is true, for we look at the world not with our eyes, but with a set of sensors, and whereas our bilogical sensors are made ready for us by eliminating the offsets (ears that don’t detect below a certain amount of decibels, eyes that are centered around a specific spectrum) our social sensors are biased, if not faulty in the first place. Well that is a major question, but my answer is clear in my head: travel, think, ask and listen.