Transcending narratives
[Music]
hello good morning yasas
tedxa ueb athens i hope all of you are
well
this is a very strange time to be giving
a tedx talk
i initially contemplated giving this
talk from my bathtub
um but then i realized that i might get
electric unit
so i did not really want to live stream
that
for random strangers to look at so here
we are
those of you who are not familiar with
who i am
my name is omi i’m an academic i’m a war
theorist i’m a fashion photographer and
an editor
among other things before i delve into
my
so-called origin story uh let me address
the moment we are in right now
we are in this extraordinary moment
of upheaval this extraordinary
divergence of many cultural social
economic and environmental disasters
from climate change which we are not
really doing anything about
to coronavirus which has killed at least
a million people and will likely kill
more
to the black lives matter movement the
me too movement
the environmental protests
where a 15 year old or 16 year old has
more common sense that most grown-ups
and they’re trying to show us a way
forward we are really in this strange
moment in history
from george floyd to tamir rice to
brianna taylor to accomplish
other people who’ve been killed
in police violence systematic racism
we are in a moment of complete imbalance
and a pandemic isolation
slow collapse of the economy and this is
not really the best time to be a human
in many ways
but in many ways this is the best time
to be a human
so we are in this intricate moment in
history
i don’t think we have ever seen this
many people rising up to demand
foundational changes
to how we live how we conduct ourselves
and as i said we are in a moment of
crisis but with every crisis there’s an
opportunity
and this is where we are we are the
crossroads where either you’re part of
the solution or you’re part of the
problem there really is no
neutrals anymore
and one of my favorite people um
historian howard zinn once said that you
cannot stay neutral on a moving train
and in many ways we are in the fastest
moving train in history
in human history
so when i was thinking about giving this
talk i was thinking about
the context we are in the context that
defines who we are
and how we react to the world
i was in oslo when i really started
thinking about this but
in a more abstract sort of way and i was
in my hotel room and my
tv was on
and for some reason sumo wrestling was
being broadcasted i’m not entirely sure
why
but i was mesmerized by it and you know
there were these two sumo wrestlers were
who were crashing into each other
the whole thing was slightly off-putting
and hilarious
it was almost like watching donald trump
play golf
but going back to context and how
everything is
imagined through the lens of that
context
i try to imagine these two very large
japanese men
with really beautiful man buns and what
i would
assume are adult diapers
crashing into each other in front of
vasilia sophia’s
or in front of maximo or
a subway in new york or
a street in dhaka or i don’t know market
in kampala
and within those contexts that would be
completely inappropriate
there will be a lot of negative reaction
if it’s in athens
the yayas won’t be happy because these
people are not wearing enough clothing
children would be mortified and somewhat
amused
and the police that usually hangs around
maximum
drinking coffee would have to come
investigate
so all in all it would create a lot of
negative reaction but within the
confines of a japanese arena it’s
perfectly fine
and that is what context is it kind of
defines redefines
and provides value to each singular
narrative we have in our lives
so when you’re thinking about the xyz
narrative
which is the topic of conversation here
today at tedx aueb
um you kind of have to think
within the box of that context
so i decided that the
experiences i’m going to talk to you
about would actually have to go beyond
the realm of context
how to transcend context and become
somewhat universal
and bypass of the duality of
optimism pessimism good or bad
and ultimately you know provide us with
us way forward in terms of how we want
to view our lives where we want to go
and how we want to go there and it’s
perfectly fine if you don’t know
where you’re going that means that any
road you take will take you there
whimsy uh and george harrison aside we
all are
products of structure biological
cultural
social uh every person on this planet
is governed by those layers of
evolutionary history wrapped in a
package of flesh and bones
so to discuss humanity is to discuss the
elemental nature
of who we are not only as a species but
also as individuals
the most unique aspect of our living is
in our lives narratives
and we always think of our lives through
stories right
um in reality we are
actually on this really absurd
trajectory trying to make sensitive
sense of it all through storytelling
so stories real or not relevant or not
our products of our brain trying to find
meaning purpose above all clarity and
that is why it is important to
find one story that is
more authentic to that specific person
and then
project it onto the world
speaking of stories speaking of who i am
i grew up in taka bangladesh i grew up
during a time of
dictatorship in bangladesh and when
you’re young and have
parents who are affluent somewhat
connected you don’t really feel
the burden of a dictatorship and i did
not
uh when i was living under a
dictatorship as a child that specific
threat of
understanding misunderstanding or lack
of understanding of dictatorship
uh became very helpful in the long run
when i was looking at dictatorship
as an idea and dissecting it
through the means of political science
statistics and war theory
as an academic and a war terrorist i
mostly focus on genocide
so i do predictive modeling uh which
basically means that i try to
do prediction models of collective human
behavior in a specific war zone
essentially to see you know where things
are moving is it moving towards genocide
so forth so on uh and one of my most
formative experiences
um concerning this and as a as an
academic was
uh with this experience with this 11
year old boy from pakistan from
waziristan and his dad
who i was interviewing about the drone
warfare
that was going on at that point in time
and initially when i heard that his son
was completely terrified to go to school
during very bright blue days
i thought that maybe there is some sort
of psychological trauma there he has
gone through
but then he told me that every single
child was terrified of going outside
when it was
really nice and beautiful and it came at
the back of
context that context being
a 67 year old grandmother who was
picking
vegetables got hit by a drone strike and
of course she got killed
tube village is over and once that news
spread
people were worried about sending out
their children to school so in many ways
u.s was winning the battle
but losing the war and that specific
instance at that specific point
i kind of realized that in many ways
the ambiguous policies of uh drone
warfare
was becoming so problematic that
we did not have any moral grounding
anymore
that of course changed over a period of
time
through academia through the military
through various other civilian operators
of covert warfare like the cia
it changed drastically and everything
came under
the laws of armed conflict which governs
these conflicts in many ways
but by that time 900 civilians have died
in
random acts of violence through drone
strikes
and the accountability aspect of it was
very low
and that experience told me that
maybe as a society we are
in a mode of static
oblivion because
a lot of things you can lose in a
society but if you lose accountability
if you lose the accountability of your
humanity
you become so static that your society
starts eroding
and i think that was one of the first
indication for me as a person
to try to push something that would
bring in everyone under the same
umbrella of
law and accountability and in the second
term of obama things of course
changed a little and
some people were held accountable some
people were not but
it was still moving in the right
direction i can’t really tell you what’s
going on right now because
i frankly do not know or care to know
that being said that 11 year old boy
and his terrified face uh
haunted me for so long like anytime i
would see blue skies that it would
remind me of that
child and he had absolutely
nothing to do with anything you know
like he wasn’t he was just born in a
terrible situation and
we who were born in a very good
situation are exasperating his life
this situation so i think
in many ways that guilt made me
a find photography as an outlet and b
start becoming much more critical about
what was
the obama administration’s policy was on
drone warfare
and you might find that you know like
i’ve written extensively on this matter
and eventually the policies changed
so at the end of the day it doesn’t
matter how rich you are
how strong you are how smart you are
there needs to be a consequence for
whatever actions you are
committing and i think that’s
what i found to be one of my formative
experiences as a person
is that realizing that so what
america is strong
america is still a civilized society we
still need to hold ourselves accountable
sometimes that works sometimes that does
not but i think
by and large that notion of entrenched
accountability is the only indicator of
civilization
at least from a war theory’s perspective
the last experience i’m going to talk to
you about is
a very personal one and i have never
talked to anyone about this
it’s about my father my father
hussein had our children was an eternal
optimist
none of his sons
got that from him both me and my brother
younger brother um are either
pragmatists or a realist and in many
ways my younger brother is much more
practical than i am
i was in london fashion week when my
phone rang and one of my cousins who is
a cardiologist told me that i need to
come home
and when you get a phone call like that
um you don’t
wait around you find a flight and you go
home that is exactly what i did
i found a flight from heathrow to
colombo
and uh colombo to taka i landed in
colombo
and i need to fill out some forms i was
looking for a pen
and i saw one of the flight attendants
from my flight
walking towards baggage claim so i
stopped her and i asked her whether she
had a pen
uh and uh she smiled at me and she said
sure i do have a pen here
so she gave me a pen and i was filling
up my form and she was like why are you
heading
i said bangladesh taka and she said to
visit family and i looked at her
and i don’t know why i said this to her
because i was in this strange state of
vulnerability and denial
and i told her i think my father is
dying
and in her eternal wisdom and zen-like
sort of way she looks at me and she said
we all have to walk through that fire
eventually
just remember your father the way you
want to remember him
and that really struck a chord with me
because this completely
perfect stranger um gave me this really
bit of information that was always
available to me but
up until now i really did not have the
capacity to fully
grasp what she was saying
i wanted to give back her pen but she
was like no you will need it later
so keep it
so i go from colombo to taka
got ushered in through the airport
end up at the icu in unit where my
father was
once i walk in the attendee doctor
asked me who i was and i told him that
well i’m the
oldest son of jose another children and
he was like okay well uh
your father has no brain functions and
um he’s just some life support because
you know we were kind of waiting for you
and i really did not want to believe
that so
i kind of ignored him and walked into
the room and
uh stood in front of my father where he
looked like he was sleeping there were
tubes coming out of him
and uh it was not a very pleasant thing
to look at but
at least there was some hope but then i
kinda
tried to hold on to his hand and i
realized that there really wasn’t anyone
there
my father was gone and
essentially the machines were just
keeping the
motion the static
alive and that’s it
there was no consciousness so i walked
out
signed the paperwork to take him off
life support
with the same pen this random person
gave me
[Music]
and my father was dead
by the time i signed that document
they took him off life support uh
and i felt this intense sort of pain
where
you feel like some parts of you are
not going to be reconciled with some
parts of you
and i think that is the pain we all feel
when we lose a parent
it does not matter how old you are this
does not really go away
it remains with you all the time
and in many ways
my father’s last memory is kinda
entrenched kinda attached to that
pen which i carry around everywhere now
i still have that pen in my bag
and if i ever in ever if i have ever
in that situation where a stranger
tells me about their life’s peril
and as for a pen i would pass on that
pen
but i viewed that pen as a bit of
humanity that
bit of sunshine in like utter darkness
at times
and remind myself that regardless of
whatever happens you know
we will get through this because
ultimately our humanity overtakes
every other need we have
i hope these experiences i shared with
you
in this rather intimate talk in the
middle of a very
strange time i would help you lead
through
the prison of time and expectation
through that prism of upheaval
and progress
and hopefully your experiences will
transcend context
and become something universal which you
can share with other people
and it would also give you a moment of
solace
ultimately this world really does not
exist without you
so it is up to you to take ownership of
it to make it better
and to leave it better and to push it
forward where
the arc of history meets the ark of
justice
thank you for listening to me and i
appreciate
your time and we will definitely meet up
somewhere along the way when borders
open
thank you athens i love you