I haven’t blogged for a long time. It’s been too long, and I find quite often that the thought of blogging crops up in my head, but I tend to forget about it once I’m actually behind a keyboard.
Part of the reason is my study. Computer science is (for me at least) a challenging degree, and I’ve had to devote a fair amount of time – between working and sporting commitments – to catching up on lectures and understanding concepts.
It doesn’t leave a lot of time not only for blogging but just for ideas about what I’d like to say to materialise solidly enough to recall when I get the chance. I can think of multiple occasions in the last few weeks where an idea I’d love to explore has floated around in my mind’s ether, only to disappear as quickly as it arrived.
There is something, actually, that has captured my imagination in the last couple of weeks.
Just today, I finished the last episode of Netflix’s Magi: The Kingdom of Magic series, one of a lonely few anime series’ available on Netflix Australia. I ended up enjoying it rather thoroughly – enough, I’d say, to recommend it to any fans of anime (but maybe not to everyone).
The story itself is fairly simplistic, and thematically it does little to explore the complexity of human emotion, but I was honestly inspired by the protagonist Aladdin’s purity of heart in dealing with his closest friends and most terrible foes.
On multiple instances, Aladdin – a young (barely even 10 I’d wager) magician of immense power – manages to defuse seemingly dire situations with minimal physical harm. The mightiest of adversaries are brought to their knees by the colossal weight of their emotional turmoil, their physical and magical dominance falling prey to collapse of their will. His sincerity, honesty and desire to see humanity prevail against all odds prove to be a winning combination, as he amasses a legendary band of allies and followers.
Being interested in the world today means an inevitable daily confrontation with madness. News headlines grow increasingly shocking as the world becomes increasingly numb, and both domestic politics and geopolitics continue their descent towards a chaotic breaking point.
I’ve read and learned about some of the worst the world has to offer, and it’s truly terrifying to think about what we as humans are capable of at our worst.
I know that Magi is a cartoon. I know that the fairytale endings that warm the soul are saved only for fiction, and that I’m extraordinarily lucky not to be part of the majority of my species in experiencing more suffering than I do happiness. I’ve found it to be the case in almost all historical instances that morality is relative and people can be monsters.
Yet I am utterly captivated by this character. I have to stop myself, remind myself that this kind of thinking and mentality is what tricks naive, ill-informed, idealistic university students into thinking they know better than most, but in spite of myself I can only feel a deep admiration for Aladdin’s actions.
I do not believe myself to be a courageous person. I do not believe that I have the strength of will to risk my own existence to stand up for what’s right, to call out injustice where I see it in such a way that signals true courage. I do worry that if the time comes to it, I will make a cowardly decision to do what benefits me rather than what benefits what is right. And most of all, I worry that I will not be able to tell when this moment comes until long after the fact.
Aladdin rails against the stranglehold of hatred – how those who act in anger will ultimately only cause further harm. This is what I intend to focus on in the near future. I intend not to restrain my anger, but to entirely revisit why I feel it in the first place.
I regrettably believe that the world’s ills cannot be solved purely through benevolence, because I do not believe that all people are capable of benevolence – but if change begins with me, then I intend to see at exactly what point this theory becomes proven.
TJDempsey 