Here is an Israeli problem:
What are the options for a couple of retirees from Be'er Sheva who are interested in attending their niece's wedding in Nahariya, on Thursday evening?
A. To leave at noon in their car to overcome the anxiety of the good ones to fly on Route 6, to hang to dry in the traffic jams in the center, to make a mistake in entering and being fined by the Route 6 North Corporation, to arrive late at the canopy. Apologize for a little while, go out before the meal, pray the road prayer devoutly, and at any gas station refuel coffee and resent the uneaten food.
B. To travel by train in the afternoon, but if they want to stay in the canopy as well, they will have to rent a B&B in Nahariya and return the next day.
third. They will not, and will not eat. They will participate in the zoom, pass a check and insult the family, that's how it is in Morocco, events are made to rejoice and be offended, and until the next wedding it will dig and surely not pass.
It is a decade that many and far away live according to train schedules.
We know exactly when the train will pass through the station, until when the last train from Tel Aviv, and on what days the train will be pressed to a partition.
In Israel, which is too centralized, transportation is bread and bread, work and credit, boutique health and expert culture.
In recent decades a whole class of train hangers has sprung up, hundreds of thousands of people living on the line, foot here and toe there.
People who will do anything not to get into the horror of traffic jams, blue and white frustrations and the punishments of the IDF, in their own car.
In recent decades, we have experienced the revival of the Ottoman railway lines, the Mandatory memories, but we are also renewing direct routes to Jerusalem and other intermediate stops.
This is good, but very far from enough.
There are still not enough night trains, and we do not have a train to Eilat, the Dead Sea or the Golan.
Starting next month, southerners working outside the city will have to deal with a new sector.
The direct trains from Tel Aviv to Sderot, Ofakim, Netivot, and other settlements in the western Negev will be canceled for a year and a half or more.
The reason - the electrification of the railway.
Instead, the people of the south will have to take one train to Ashkelon, and there wait for the train to Tel Aviv.
On the face of it, this is not a particularly difficult problem, but considering the fact that it is a slower and slower train anyway, the train's response that it will add "on average only 10 minutes to wait" is tantamount to mourning for a loved one who drowned in a pool of "only 10 inches, on average."
There is no debate - electrifying the train is an important act that the residents of the periphery also welcome, but the problem is that the management of the train does not involve the public in making its decisions, and establishes finished facts, without examining other alternatives that are probably less convenient.
The Ministry of Transportation and the minister in charge should not stand as a side scout tribe, and demand that trains and shuttles be assembled so as not to rob a few more decades of life from the residents of the south.
To all those who have been in cultural isolation
for the past two weeks, we are told that The Squid Game is a series from South Korea that breaks all viewing records, and has become a worldwide cultural phenomenon.
But the preoccupation with numbers, dates, and other treatises, screens a rare cultural event that transcends the boundaries of the vanity world of cultural parasites. Beyond a sweeping plot and a variety of stylish costumes that you will not be able to escape this coming Purim, "The Squid Game" does a rare thing in the field of commercial art, and presents a black and critical look to the modern lifestyle. The creators of the series confront the excessive and inequitable lifestyle with its destructive results, and examine what happens when the worship of individualism and the preference for the individual break records.
The series follows a group of people in great debt and financial difficulties, who choose to participate in a mysterious "reality" game. Participating in the game allows them to win an amount equivalent to NIS 125 million, and for that they have to win six seemingly simple children's games. Those with a keen eye will notice that games are metaphors for modern economic perceptions, and a preference for personal gain over the general spirit. The bizarre reality brings the lust for blood to the edge of excitement. Losing a game means one thing - eliminating the losers.
The series does not renew anything, we have already seen similar content in "The Hunger Games". But the series is not about a futuristic world, but about the here and now east of us. And its power in reality.
It is no coincidence that the series was created in South Korea. On the one hand, it is a prosperous technological country at the forefront of the high-tech world, and on the other hand, a country with a tough race for life that crushes the weak in society without hesitation or a hint of pity. The figures are staggering - 20 percent of the top earners hold 166 times the capital of the bottom 20 percent. Housing prices are skyrocketing. And so are the number of insolvencies evicted from their homes to the street. National debt is greater than gross domestic product, unemployment among young people is rampant, and of all older people - 46.5 percent are below the absolute poverty line.
Think about it for a moment, 46.5 percent of the company's adults are in a state of hunger, at risk of homelessness, and without medical support or reasonable access to medical services. As you can see in the squid game, and in the Oscar-winning film "The Parasites" from two years ago, this was not always the case. In the past, South Korea was an egalitarian society, with a large mutual guarantee. A traditional society in which respect for father and mother and concern for their well-being were part of the basic values of society. The meaning of the loss of tradition for modern society is examined by the series.
South Korea is an
interesting
test case
for pig capitalism (and so that no one gets confused, the prize money is piled up in a series inside a transparent pig's head), as its neighbor - its sister from the north - is the extreme case to the other side. A country run by a particularly radical communist system of government. This makes the world in which the characters of The Squid Game operate more extreme.
Marx believed that socialism was not a social choice, but a necessity. He hypothesized that a situation in which very few people would control most people without them revolting would not last forever. Much of the world's communist revolutions have indeed come true as Marx predicted, but recent decades have shown that communism has not proven to be a particularly superior and humane system of government. Here and there you can still find in the academy some established Marxists, longing for such a revolution with pitchforks and Kalashnikovs on the poverty-stricken streets far from the university. But even radical Marxists did not assume that the revolution would be televised and that weapons would be the remote control.
From the series "The Squid Game",
In my opinion the impact of the series on billions around the world is significant to the global consciousness at least as much as all the departments for the philosophies of morality.
The series presents (not in a particularly extreme way) content that is not suitable for children and is recommended for adult viewing only.
But this is exactly why it is so popular with teens around the world.
After they finish watching it for the third time, some of them will also start poking the questions,
what makes "Squid Game" different from Big Brother, Survival, or any other Molech reality show?
Why do the god of ratings so much like to throw people into a situation that will force them to take plots and intrigue?
And why are all reality shows aimed at creating the one and only "one" standing with raised hands at the end of the pile of corpses beneath it, and what is the social, economic and human price we pay when this model seeps like poison into the abyss of human culture?
"In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is an act of social responsibility," Robert McKee wrote in his book A Story, as if directing his remarks at The Squid Game. Pleasant viewing, or something.
