The Ugly Truth

The life of Pi is a good metaphor for understanding people ‘s beliefs about the history of the United States.

 It is so because the American people don’t want to know the ugly truth about their leaders.

Americans want to believe in the fantasy.

They love American myths. They need to believe that we are always the good guy. They need to believe that we are the most civilized people on earth. They need to believe that only the Russians, Iranians and North Koreans commit horrible deeds.

They also want to believe that our government is generous without strings attached. Americans hear of foreign aid, but they choose to  believe that it is  money given away without any compensation.

In this Walt Disney fabrication, America gives and gives but never receives.  Americans are not exploiters, but beautiful exporters of democracy whose thankless gifts are rarely repaid.

The dirty deeds of America’s various thugs around the globe are shielded from the eyesight of most Americans.  The slave shops that America’s corporations run in Haiti and in Indonesia are never discussed on mainstream media.

If you haven’t seen the Life of Pi, the movie is about the dark nature of man.

Ii involves a little boy named Pi who has an innocent view of life.

Pi’s family owns a zoo.  There are many animals one of whom is a tiger named Richard Parker. Pi views the tiger as an innocent pet.

His father tries to teach Pi a lesson  about the brutality of life by using  Richard Parker as an example.  The father tries to express to young Pi that a tiger is not a pet; he’s a vicious animal.

To do so, he ties an innocent goat inside the cage with Richard Parker. In short order, Richard Parker devours the goat.  

Pi watches in horror.

Of course, the movie is much more than an animal story.

As I have stated the movie is about the inner dark nature of man.

Pi must figure this out for himself. 

This journey begins when Pi‘s family moves the family zoo to a different country.

While his family is on a journey across the sea with the crated animals from the zoo, the ship capsizes, and everybody is lost, except for Pi, an orangutan, a hyena, a tiger, and a zebra.

They are all stuck in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean.

When Pi is finally rescued after finding land, only Pi and Richard Parker remain.

The Japanese owners of the ship that capsized would like to know what happened.

Pi tells a story of how in trying to survrve the animals end up killing each other with the exception of Richard Parker who disappears into the jungle.

Of course, the story of the animals is a fabrication. 

It is Pi  alone who survives.

The other animals are representations of the other members of the ship who Pi, represented by Richard Parker,  has  most likely either killed or eaten in order to survive.

At the end of the movie Pi’s inner brutal self represented by the tiger, Richard Parker, disappears into the jungle and does not look back. He does not say goodbye. 

That is our inner self. That is who we are as human beings. 

And this is the reality that we shield from ourselves.

We don’t want to know about Richard Parker.

He is within us, but we prefer not to acknowledge his presence.

When he erupts from  the jungle to commit violence, he devours his prey, then quickly  retreats  into the jungle.

This is who we are.

And that is how our government conducts itself overseas.

We don’t want to know the ugly truth about who we are.

Sincerely,

Archer Crosley

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