Live To Win

Some years ago while shoplifting from a major hardware store I experienced a type of old fashioned security system – one that needs no technology, or cameras or electronic tags and yet has the possibility to be everywhere. I’m speaking of the undercover security guard, and I found the experience remarkable because it caused me to reflect on how systems of fascism and state control have always relied on the impulse that humans have to turn on one another. Much like the panopticon (a circular prison system designed around a central tower from which guards could, in theory, always be watching), centralised states with heavy surveillance – like the former German Democratic Republic, or the Stalinist USSR, keep their citizens in check by making sure that there could always be someone watching. Lets call this “someone”, Mr Invisible – because he is everywhere, yet only reveals himself at strategic moments. Mr Invisible is the shadow that walks just a step behind you, keep...

While travelling across India and Iran I have been trying to observe the life, history and politics of both countries from the perspective of locals, partly from a desire to understand their cultures as they relate to long stories of struggle and national identity, and partly to give myself a better perspective on the life experience of being born in Australia – a new nation, yet one with opportunity to develop in many exciting directions. So far while learning, meeting people and asking questions, the dominant theme of my thoughts has been the tension within Iran and India between traditional cultures and the pull of globally accessible information about modernity and consumerism in the West. This is particularly felt by Iranian young people living in cramped, repressive situations, but it also expresses itself in the rise of the ambitious and modern Indian middle class, something which seems incongruous or unfair in a country where traditions and also poverty are so vividly visi...