Jonathan Brun

Taegukgi, Film, Civil War and the Human Mind

Tae Guk Gi is an epic Korean War movie that I believe is one of the greatest war movies ever. It tells the story of two brothers who are sent off to the Korean War. The older brother takes the riskiest missions available in the vain hope that he will be able to send his younger brother home. The war destroys their family and their country. This film is one of the goriest war movies I have seen and a large portion of it is devoted to battle scenes. This begs the question, how much violence in a war movie is too much and how much is too little.

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A war movie is a war movie because it concerns war. Despite the obvious redundancy of that comment, there is little doubt that battle should be the main thrust of the film, but we must concern ourselves with two aspects of the depictions of battle scenes: 1. Their length vis-à-vis the film’s length and 2. Their depth, meaning the goriness and proximity to a true battle scene. I firmly believe that both elements must be adhered to to the point of the audience thinking it may be slightly too much. If there is any hope of conveying the horrors of war to a popcorn munching audience, the audience must at the very least be made to feel uncomfortable. If the battle scenes are too ‘light’ then the audience may come across with a sugar coated version of the front lines. At the same time, overly gruesome scenes can turn an audience off the more human aspects of war – broken minds, broken families and broken lives.

The next thing that this film does, which I believe is very important, is its presentation of the war for what it was: a terrible civil war backed by foreign powers. Fighting on home soil is something that all North Americans and some Europeans are out of touch with. I have always maintained that it is entirely different to send your armies off to a foreign land as opposed to having the mortars and bullets landing near your childhood home. In civil war, it is the civilians who suffer the most. Families are torn apart, homes are destroyed and friends turn on each other. This film is probably the first one that really shows a civil war.

After watching it for a second time, there is an important scene at the beginning, which foreshadows all that is to come. The soon-to-be wife of one of the brothers shows a bag of barley, which she obtained at a communist rally. She states that it is impossible to get good food and that “she would kill for food like this”. That’s what civil war is. Rarely is it about political ideology or great injustice, more often than not, people switch sides, turn on neighbors and commit unthinkable crimes for food and land. Ideologies and racial tension are the symptoms of resource shortages, not the other way around. A closer look at Rwanda, Sudan, and other conflicts often demonstrate how a few evil people take advantage of a weakened country to manipulate it to their ends.

Another main reason that this film remains so powerful is due to its two main characters. The film revolves around their love and hate for each other. The human mind cannot conceptualize large-scale events very well. We cannot imagine the size of the planet, the atmosphere, the universe, war or genocide. Of course, when we are told for the first time that six million Jews were gazed by the Nazis, we sit back and realize what evil humanity is capable of. However, try and imagine six million unique faces, their families, their fear and innocence and we simply draw a blank. Just as computers have technical limitations, so too does the human brain. We have a limited capacity to imagine and place unique items. Numerous studies confirm this truth; notably, the vast majority of the population can only place six musical tones in order, above six tones, we begin to mess them up and cannot properly arrange them.

This of course does not apply to the musically inclined, but it does apply to most people. On the same note, the majority of the population has difficulty seeing large events on their full scale. For that reason, a story that follows the plight of one person or a single family is much more powerful than a documentary about the entire conflict. On a personal level, I was much more deeply touched when I visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam than when I visited the concentration camps in Germany. This film conveys to the full extent the sacrifices that one family member makes to the other in the context of a large conflict and the consequent destruction of his humanity.

One last point that is worthy to be retained from this film is how far we, and the Koreans, have come. In a little of fifty years, South Korea has become a top technological and economic power. The atrocities of this war are unthinkable to today’s youth and we should be thankful for our ignorance. War is perhaps the worst aspect of humanity’s power and must be avoided. Appeasement is not the solution, but education, communication and cooperation is. Communist China has become an international powerhouse out of its own will, full-blow war was not needed to destroy Soviet Russia, India slowly developed its own potential, South Korea is exactly the same geographic dimensions as before the war and the few African countries that are doing okay are the ones which were not privy to colonialism or foreign aid. Political change can only be brought about from the inside and foreign intervention has never worked. For that reason, the Iraq war cannot and will not be brought to a promising conclusion anytime soon. The people of the country are the ones with the keys to success and no foreign power, no matter their might, can overcome that.

This film remains very important because it demonstrates the particular atrocities of a civil war from the perspective of the people who lived it, not the foreign saviors or criminals.

The Tipping Point

I recently read the book The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. If was pretty cool and disciussed many things of interest. Most notably, this book seems to have fallen into a new category of non-fiction, which I like to call: Synthesization. Meaning, there are these non-fiction books which have been topping bestseller lists despite their serious content. They do not actually present much new “data”, but rather, they take many different studies and synthesize them into a coherent image that is applicable to real life. Such books, which I have recently read are: The Inginuity Gap, The Tipping Point, Collapse, The White Man’s Buden, and The Weather Makers.

They have very broad relevence to society and science. Below is a brief email I sent to the author of Malcolm Gladwell, if you are familiar with the topic. Tell me what you think.

Malcolm Gladwell,

I have just read your book The Tipping Point, and found it quite interesting. What came to mind when reading the section about the Salesmen, Maven and Connectors was the new website called Facebook.com. Much like mySpace and other personal sites it displays peoples lists of friends and shows the different networks that they are part of. But what is of most interest is that some people may have upwards of 300 people listed as friends but have few wallposts, which are comments that are posted by users but are visible to the entire community. It has been said that you judge your love by the amount of people that love you, not the amount of people you love.

This brings me back to the point that as you discussed in your book, Connectors have a knack at making connections with people, but more than that they have knack at making connections that people remember. So some of these people who list 300 friends, but have 50 comments are unlikly to be connectors despite their apparent popularity; whereas someone with 150 friends, but 150 comments may in fact be much more connected. In other words, these people have deeper connections because it is other people who feel a need to contact that one person and not that one person to continuously stay in contact with all his 150 friends.

Another side note that I would have liked to see some case studies about is poverty. As far as I know there have not been any places where a Tipping Point has been reached regarding poverty. Many IMF and World Bank economists claim to be able to start a poor economy on the road to growth by injected an initial supply of capital, framing some key laws and regulations and then letting the country take care of itself. This has never worked despite claims to the contrary. Post WWII Japan took off because of western technology, but the ideas and laws regarding industry were largely home-grown. This failed idea of applying western thought to poor contries is well outlined in the book The White Man’s Burden by William Easterly. So do you think it is possible to apply the theory of the Tipping Point on a large society wide scale, particularly in a society to which you are not native to? Meaning, can you make a third world society sustainable by identifying the Tipping Points of that society with the help of locals and research and then applying your findings to the country as a whole? Just a few thoughts.

Hope your work continues well and that there are more interesting books and articles to come.

Regards,

Jonathan Olivier BRUN

Wealth and Poverty

The problems that face the average Canadian, American, French or any western citizen are rarely life threatening or of great proportions. Long ago are the days when people were genuinely worried about their security, food, or their shelter being taken from them. There remains tremendous poverty in the western world, children who go to school hungry and face aggression and violence in their neighborhoods, homes and schools. While we cannot forget the less fortunate, we must cherish what we have built. By and large, we have developed as a society to such a point, that the thought of being drafted for war, waiting in bread lines or being sent to prison is a thought only entertained at the movies.

Society is approaching a point where nearly everyone was born in a post-WWII world. And while there have been wars since, non have demanded the sacrifices that were needed to defeat fascism. My generation’s main concerns are the cars they will own, jeans they will wear and the size of their homes. Complaints are so disproportionate with the situation it is difficult to comprehend. The past fifty years have been the best in human history. Never has such a period of decadence and stability been accessible to such a large percentage of the population.

We need to remind ourselves of this truth everyday. When we forget the lack of historical precedence, we lower ourselves to the level of materialism, superficiality and irrelevance. I do not propose that we give up our nice, safe cars, cottage homes or all-inclusive trips to Tijuana; only, that we understand that in our daily lives we are rarely in a situation that is either serious or worth fighting over. Of course we still get cancer, perish in accidents, lose family, go bankrupt and face serious issues; but on a general level, our society has a stability and level of wealth never before seen in the history on mankind.

We must cherish the family we have, the friends we know and avoid confrontation over who gets the front seat, the best table at the club, or the new toy. We, as a society, need to stop complaining about the small problems we may have and start solving the big ones. I will never propose complacency and I will be the first to tell you that our current consumption level and lifestyle is not sustainable.

It is therefore our responsibility to future generations to solve our real problems; degradation of the environment, human rights, and most importantly, education. We have the technology and the manpower to accomplish great things if only we did not spend the time we do dwelling on consumption, the noise of your next-door neighbor, the friend who said something stupid. Education on matters such as environment, homelessness, domestic violence, and other social issues should have a place along our children’s English, Math and History classes. It is not enough to teach the past, we must inform them of the necessary steps to conquer our future.

Developing countries such as China and India will never see the level of wealth that we enjoy in Canada. The simple mathematics of resources dictates that we cannot all have cottages, two cars, and unlimited drinking water. However, with proper technology and better social education, these western privileges will be accessible to many people. What I hope to confer from this brief piece is that we must take everything with a grain of salt. When you get upset of a friend’s intonation or language, a bad driver, or a impolite bank teller; take a breath and think not of a child starving in Africa, but rather of the security and wealth that our western society has. In our world, our problems are not of the most dangerous nature and in many cases, it is all just a game.

Looking Back on My Middle Kingdom

I once read that if you stay in China for a week you can write a book; if you stay for a month, you can write an essay; if you stay for six months, you can write a paragraph; if you stay for a year you can write a sentence, and any longer, you can’t write anything at all.

I very much feel this is true, once you have stayed in China for a prolonged period you realize how complex it is. A quick glance, and you may think you have identified some key differences, but when you look closer you realize that it is not that simple.

I have wanted to go to China ever since I started reading about its emergence 5 years ago, while still in CEGEP. I knew I had to find a way to go so that I could experience the most possible with the smallest incurred cost. When I finally made it to China, I was asked by my friends if I had a “culture shock” when I arrived in China, the truth is I think I was well prepared mentally and my largest “culture shock” was actually when I got back to Montreal. I knew about the poverty and the injustice in China, but what amazed me was how kind and welcoming even the poorest of people could be when we sat down to talk with them. At the base, all humans have common desires; security, love, and comfort.

After seven months in China you realize how petty any problem you could have in Canada is. I have never worried about getting food, or escaping the police, or being confined to a life on a factory line. I genuinely feel that most people should travel to a third world country to truly see how the majority of the world lives.

I had the luxury of traveling all over China for work and for vacation. The country is vast and diverse and in many ways, cannot be grouped into one greater China. Many of the more remote areas are barely under the control of the central government and it is difficult to imagine a high level of devotion to the party. What this leads to, is an appreciation for what we have achieved in the western world, our complex institutions, respect for the law and our relative equality of living standards. Before leaving the developed world, you tend to take this for granted and assume that it is relatively simple to build such said institutions, when in fact, it is remains the greatest challenge any developing nation faces.
On a more personal level, I spent most of my free time with individuals who were significantly older than I. Most of my friends were 27 to 30 years of age, and without exaggerating, time spent with that age group will inevitably change the perspective of a 22 year old. Their life experiences, personal accomplishments, and responsibilities altered my view of what it takes to be successful. In China, I met more adventurous, more daring types of people than I met on my jobs in Timmins or Dunkerque (my previous two work terms). These people push you do more, move faster and work harder. I plan to go on more trips, experience more cultures and keep pushing hard.

It remains very difficult to quantify the effects that China had on me, but there is no doubt that it changed me for the better. I will likely return thanks to my positive experience and my base of Mandarin skills that I have acquired. Many things that I expected to find in China, I did not, and many that I did not expect, occurred.