Walking the streets, it is easy to see how absorbed everyone is in their own lives. Very few people look up from what they are wrapped up in to look at what’s happening around them. This seems to be a result of the capitalist world we live in, where people are judged in terms of wealth and success, creating the competitive standards that disregard sympathy and concern. The result is that we become self absorbed and resistant to helping others.

Before the use of money there was a sense that everyone needed everyone else, since no one could sustain himself or herself entirely. The butcher needed someone to make his clothes, while the tailor needed someone to make his needles. A system of bartering created a need to support other people, otherwise a service would disappear. However, with the use of money there is no longer a direct link between the things we need and where it comes from. After all, as long as we have money we can buy it in the shops right? But people seem to miss, in their rush to become rich, the importance of different jobs in society.

It is important not to take for granted what money can buy for us, but in a capitalist world it can be very difficult not to get absorbed in the money making game. Sometimes it is good to take a step back and remember what you want rather than what everyone else expects of you.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world. – John le Carre

Independence Day Competition: Make your mark!

Kubatana is offering a prize of $100 for the most creative submission commenting on Independence Day. Submissions can include poetry, prose, a very short film, original art, a design for a sticker that we might take further, a photograph . . . you get the idea. We encourage you to think outside of the box! Don’t be shy, let it all out. A delivery of 33 cupcakes with Zimbabwean flags stuck in them might win our hearts but not The Money – hmmm, you choose!

How?
You can email your submission to: info [at] kubatana [dot] net
If your submission is an unusual shape or size and is impossible to submit over the Interweb, then get in touch on the same email address and we’ll work something out.

Deadline: 26 April, 3pm Kubatana time
Please include your name, and phone number

I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.
- Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

Amnesty International welcomes Vladimir Putin to Amsterdam.

Via this isn’t happiness

I wanted to give you something —

no stone, clay, bracelet,
no edible leaf could pass through.
Even a molecule’s fragrance by then too large.
Giving had been taken, as you soon would be.
Still, I offered the puffs of air shaped to meaning.
They remained air.
I offered memory on memory,
but what is memory that dies with the fallible inks?
I offered apology, sorrow, longing. I offered anger.
How fine is the mesh of death. You can almost see through it.
I stood on one side of the present, you stood on the other.

Jane Hirshfield:  Come, Thief