Headline August 21, 2018/ '' ' HUMANITY OF HONOUR ' ''

'' ' HUMANITY OF HONOUR ' ''

I'VE NEVER EVER DOUBTED that humanity is a privilege, - even if we, as we the animals who think -

Are also the creatures who agitate, plot and fantasize. Pico Iyer at his very, very best.

NARA, JAPAN : We'd just emerged from a long and rather liquid dinner on a barge along the Taedong River, in the heart of North Korea's showpiece capital Pyongyang.

Two waitresses had finished joining our English tour guide, Nick, in some more than boisterous karaoke numbers. Now, in the bus back to the hotel, one young local guide broke into a heartfelt rendition of ''Danny Boy.''

His charming and elegant colleague, Miss Peng - North Korea is no neophyte when it comes to trying to impress visitors - was talking about the pressures she faced as an unmarried woman of 26, white Chanel clip glinting in her hair.

Another of our minders, there were four or five for the 14 of us, with a camera trained on our every move for what we were assured was a ''souvenir video'' kept saying, ''You think I'm a government spy. Don't you?''

But I was back in North Korea because nowhere I'd seen raised such searching questions about what being truly human involves. Nowhere so unsettled my easy assumptions about what ''reality'' really is.

The people around me clearly wept and bled and raged as I did; but what did it do to your human instincts to be told that you could be sentenced, perhaps to death, if you displayed a picture of your mother - or your granddaughter - in your home, instead of a photo of Father of the Nation?

Did human really include not being permitted to leave your home-town, and not being allowed to say what you think?

I've have doubted that humanity is a privilege, even if we, as the animals who think, are also creatures who agitate, plot and fantasize. Governments try to suppress this at times, and many of us in the freer world now imprison ourselves by choosing to live through screens, or to see through screens -

Like the Buddhist demagogue Ashin Wirathu who, in defiance of the shared humanness that the Buddha worked so hard to elucidate, compares his Muslim neighbours in Myanmar to wolves and jackals.

More and more of these days seemed to be living at post-human speeds determined by machines, to the point where we barely have time for kids or friends,

But if we are feeling less than human - or pretending we can engineer mortality away - for most of us it is a choice we are making, and can unmake tomorrow.

In my home of more than 30 years, Japan, nobody thinks twice about being married by a robot or aplogizing to a pencil after you throw it across a room.

My neighbor's rattle on cheerfully about ''2.5 dimensional characters'' and ''demi-humans''; their government has appointed the mouthless cartoon cutie Hello Kitty and a 22-century blue robotic cat named Doraemon as cultural ambassadors.

Lines between animate and inanimate run differently in an animist Shinto universe where - you see this in the beautiful films of Hayao Miyazaki- 

*Every blade of grass or speck of dust is believed to have a spirit*.

The Honor and Serving of this beautiful writing continues. The World Students Society thanks author and researcher Pico Iyer.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all ''register'' on : wssciw.blogspot.com - The World Students Society - for every subject in the world and  Twitter-!E-WOW! - the Ecosystem 2011 :

''' Harmless - Humanity '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless