the age of mankind

p/s: blogger does not seem to be working, so i dunno if this'll get posted. but im gonna write it anyway.

the death of ke shou liang, leslie cheung and anita mui marks the death of an era in chinese entertainment. more importantly though, is the symbolism of their deaths on the state of mankind in the 21st century.

all three were born into poor families and worked very hard to get to where they are right now. yet, with increase in income and fame came not happiness but instead a life more empty than before.

ke died of an alcohol-induced asthma attack, cheung of severe depression, and mui's overworking allowed cancer to take her life. the forms of death so common to modern man have taken even the seemingly ageless celebrities.

our lives are beginning to resemble that of worker bees: we live in hive-like apartments, window-to-window. we work day and night, slaving in hopes of earning more money and this goes on, until the day we die.

as the lights get brighter, we feel more empty. beneath the flashy clothes we wear, the fancy cars are great gaping holes. we are but trees hollowed inside, ready to drop dead. in a desperate attempt to fill in the emptiness of our lives, we turn to vices - smoking, drinking, drugs. we revel in the hallucinating effects of these chemicals, but tomorrow, waking up to hangovers we discover to our dismay that a deeper hole has been gouged within us.

sadly enough, our most precious possessions today are those that we cannot take away. in place of families, we have mountains of money, much of which we do not see. we take pride in looking at the printed arabic figures on our bank books, and in exchange for an extra digit, we gladly throw in our health.

are we but prisoners of our lifestyle, prisoners of pieces of metal and scraps of paper? is that all there is left to be said for mankind?