Blood Diamond - An Evening in a Portuguese Cinema, or: Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend...!?
Tonight we went to the cinema and watched Leo di Caprio et. al. in Blood Diamond. Not really aware of what we had to expect, we were eventually strongly touched by the picture and, like most of the people in the cinema, I guess, apalled by the main message of the movie, and the insight that it is difficult, if not to say impossible, for a single individual to change the course of things. As we left the cinema, which by the way was full of ignorants who really had the nerve to play with their mobiles (peasants!) while seeing innocent kids being transformed into war machines, Gordana and I ended up having a conversation about us never buying a single diamond. Well, I doubted that intention very strongly as most of us have short-lived memories and tend to accept the unacceptable by far too quickly; in particular when one oneself is not directly concerned by the course of events in other parts of the world. Now, does this make us ignorants? Does this mean we care more about the pursuit of our own happiness than about live and thus peace and sustainable development on this planet? How long does our bad conscience last? If we came to the conclusion that buying a diamond might not be politically correct, how long would we manage to stick to such an insight? A day or two, a week, a month? Well, at the end of the day, I believe most of us are concerned, sometimes appalled and even shocked about things that happen to the "Other", but it does not make us change, it does not make us get engaged and try to get people together to finally make this wonderful planet an even more wonderful and, most of all, peaceful place. Why do we shy away? Why are we so egocentric? Is life really only about ourselves? Or is it more important to make sure that the lately acquired mobile is working and that we posess the latest label, if not to say the latest piece from Van Cleef?
