Horizon Cybermedia Year One: First Anniversary and Annual Report

This is it! Horizon Cybermedia, Inc. finally reaches its first anniversary! As you might know already, the company and website, http://www.explorationtheseries.com were launched on July 29, 2008—a modest media company with titanic ambitions! Founded on the premise that raw talent, skill and ability are the cornerstones of success on the universal platform of the internet, as opposed to political connections or the influence of self-appointed cultural gatekeepers, Horizon Cybermedia is steadily growing into a media company in its own right.

It has been an exciting and eventful first year, with Horizon Cybermedia making strong and steady progress towards our stated goals:

• We have launched the first two episodes of the Exploration Film Series, with several more episodes still to come. The episodes, The Elephanta Caves and The Wine Country are currently online at our website http://www.explorationtheseries.com.


• Horizon Cybermedia has a YouTube channel featuring promotional videos for our films in HD.


• Horizon Cybermedia is also currently podcasting on iTunes.


• Horizon Cybermedia has a channel on Blip.tv.


• Horizon Cybermedia's promotional videos are also available on many other video-sharing sites on the web, such as Revver, DailyMotion, Yahoo, MySpace, MetaCafé, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo, Sevenload, i2TV and others.


• Horizon Cybermedia has been regularly updating our blog with fresh, relevant, topical content for your reading pleasure and interest. Articles from the blog have been posted across the web at numerous article publishing and ezine sites.


• Horizon Cybermedia has also produced a DVD of a special version of our first film under the title Exploring Elephanta. The DVD was originally created for complimentary distribution in the film festival circuit. It will soon be available for purchase as a collector's item.

However, the past is prologue. Horizon Cybermedia has only one direction it plans to move—onward and upward. Check back regularly with us at our website and blog for plenty of fresh, new media content to come. Some of the projects currently in the works include:

• Several more episodes in the ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar. We have already completed principal photography for films on such venues as Calcutta, India; Big Bear Lake, CA; the Buddhist Kanheri Caves near Mumbai, India; Half Moon Bay, CA, and other fascinating locations.


• Also in the works is a DVD release of the entire first season of the film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar, which will be on sale soon.


• We also have plans to release a print edition of selected articles from our blog. This project, however, will probably be several more years in the making. Expect the book to be released probably on our fifth anniversary (if not sooner).


• We are also working on several script ideas (in primary stages) and we plan, in the future, to expand our production scope to plot-driven short and feature-length film projects. We will also continue to produce high quality documentaries. Expect the rate and scope of our production efforts to grow dramatically as we continue to expand.

Horizon Cybermedia's ambitious media production agenda is, ultimately, dependent on you, the viewer, for support. Our motivation has always been to produce high quality media content for your consumption—media content that respects your intelligence and appeals to your highest instincts to elevate your spirit. We aspire to produce quality art and media that holds to our mission statement:

To be a positive voice in the media space;
to put artistic integrity above mercenary interests;
to make a truthful, meaningful artistic statement.

To this end, we are dependent on you to support our operation. If our vision and ideals and the quality of our produced media content appeal to you, then please do continue to support us. You can do this in many ways:

• Spread the word about us amongst your friends and family. Encourage them regularly to check out the website and blog and to spread the word about us even further.


• If you are truly inspired by our mission statement and our efforts, perhaps you might be interested in making a direct contribution to support Horizon Cybermedia. You may do so securely and anonymously through Paypal by clicking on the Donate button to the right or on the contact form on our website.


• You might also be interested in investing in Horizon Cybermedia, Inc., to further contribute to our growth and expansion. For more information, feel free to contact Horizon Cybermedia either through the contact form on our website or directly via email.

Here's looking forward to the coming year and the dramatic growth and expansion in our operation that it is sure to bring! Thank you for supporting us in the past year and we look forward to you joining us in many more adventures to come—exploring new horizons and journeying to ever more exciting venues.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

The Eagle has Landed!

On this day, July 20, 1969, man first landed on the moon. The Apollo 11 Moon Mission, commanded by Neil Armstrong and backed up by Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins successfully made the historic journey to the lunar surface and back, forever going down in history as the first human beings to stand upon another world and look upon the earth as a distant planetary sphere in the sky.

It is, perhaps, something of a cliché to harp on about the Apollo 11 mission, even though it is, arguably, the most important historical event of the 20^th Century. But I do so, at the risk of trivializing the event, for another reason—possibly a little more self-serving. Because while July 20, 2009 marks the 40^th anniversary of the moon landing, it also comes very close to marking the first anniversary of the launch of Horizon Cybermedia, Inc. and the website http://www.explorationtheseries.com. Actually, the website was launched on July 29, 2008. I remember pretty well what I was doing on this day, a year ago—I had probably just completed editing the first film of my Exploration series and was probably recording the soundtrack at the time.

But the parallels don't end there!

Again, I say this at the risk of trivializing a tremendously important historical event and incurring the wrath of the astronauts of the mission, so I hope they won't be offended when I note that I say this in a lighter vein.

First of all, the Apollo mission and the moon landing were originally inspired by a speech given by President John F. Kennedy to a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961:

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

Similarly, Horizon Cybermedia was also, in part, inspired by another quote from John F. Kennedy, namely:

"We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth."

Secondly, just as the Apollo 11 moon mission was conceived as a humanitarian mission with a message of peace to all nations, to the backdrop of the disastrous Vietnam War, similarly, Horizon Cybermedia was also launched with a humanitarian mission and a message of peace and world exploration to all nations, to the backdrop of the catastrophic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thirdly, as the moon mission represents the pinnacle of the Homeric spirit of exploration and adventure from the Odyssey, so also Horizon Cybermedia is, in many ways, inspired by the Homeric tradition of the Odyssey. In fact, in some respects, I believe that Horizon Cybermedia comes closer to the true Homeric spirit of the Odyssey, because while the Apollo 11 mission was a massive, state-funded (through NASA), public sector enterprise in space exploration, Horizon Cybermedia, on the other hand, is a small, private sector enterprise in terrestrial exploration and independent film-making. However, our status as a small, independent film producer gives us an edge because we are able to remain true to our independent vision.

Finally, the Apollo 11 moon mission, while being a landmark in so many other ways, was also a landmark in film-making history with the first video footage actually filmed on the surface of the moon (which is pretty amazing if you really think about it). So also, Horizon Cybermedia hopes, in all humility, that 40 years from now, we will also be considered something of a landmark in film-making history! Who knows, maybe some day, we will film an episode of our Exploration series on the surface of the moon! In fact, you never know, that day may well arrive sooner than we expect!

Anyway, having exhausted my resources with my admittedly somewhat shameless attempts at self-promotion, I now turn to the main event of the hour: the 40^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon!

My heartfelt congratulations to astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on this anniversary of their history-making, ground-breaking lunar expedition and the message of universal peace and hope it brings to all of mankind!

Best wishes from Horizon Cybermedia, Inc. and http://www.explorationtheseries.com!

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

The Heroism of Individuals

One of the greatest things about living in America is enjoying the enormous privilege of witnessing first-hand the extra-ordinary greatness of the accomplishments of heroic individuals—human beings who, ultimately, are no different than you or me in that they are mortal beings, not superhuman or gods. And yet, their achievements are so mind-blowing in the eyes of the rest of us that they achieve a status that is greater than us—we salute, respect and look up to them as the embodiments of the heroic ideals that we aspire to achieve ourselves.

On July 20^th 2009, we celebrate the 40^th anniversary of what is probably the seminal event of the 20^th century—the Apollo 11 mission—man landing on the surface of the moon. It is impossible to trivialize the significance of this event. The heroic individuals who first stepped onto the moon—Armstrong and Aldrin—are revered globally as the representatives of one of the pinnacles of human achievement. In the Homeric tradition of the Odyssey, they are:

. . . those few who have sailed past the point of the map where dragons be and come back home to tell the rest of us what they saw.
- Moon Walkers, Jeffrey Kluger, Time magazine, July 27, 2009

Their's is the accomplishment of true heroic individualism—of a few courageous explorers who were undaunted by what might seem to the rest us to be impossible odds. It always blows my mind to revisit the (newly restored) archival footage of man first landing on an alien world—the moon. As Aldrin referred to it, a "magnificent desolation"—like nothing else anywhere on the surface of the earth.

Living in America, one is continually reminded of the extra-ordinary, mind-blowing achievements of heroic individuals such as these—so much so that one often runs the risk of trivializing them and taking them for granted. Only recently, the world bore witness to the passing of one of the architects of modern TV news media—Walter Cronkite, designated "the most trusted man in America" by his peers. The story of Cronkite's passing is the number one news story of the moment—but what really strikes me about him is a point made by Susan Zirinsky, one of Cronkite's producers, on the CNN news show, AC 360:

. . . what was so striking about the time was the impact a single voice could have . . . those of us that grew up in that era saw the impact that this single man had . . . he was about the core value of the news.

Also striking are legendary newsman and Cronkite's successor as CBS news anchor, Dan Rather's words about his mentor, spoken on the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC:

. . . as a television news anchor, . . . he set the standard . . . by expanding the public's understanding and connection to big stories . . . . As a sole anchor . . . he connected.

The profusion of heroic individualism in America is something many of us take for granted. It is, indeed, an amazing thing that American culture encourages, venerates and admires heroic individuals who go against the grain, challenge the status quo and achieve the impossible. That has always been the foundation of American culture.

In fact, one has to look no further than last year's Presidential elections to witness first-hand the value that American's place on heroic individualism. It is no coincidence that Barack Obama, the current U.S. President, is a testament to the American fascination with and admiration of individualists, as the Obama Presidential campaign had all the hallmarks of a heroic individualist who challenged the status quo and overcame impossible odds—all the while in deference to another heroic individualist, namely, Rev. Martin Luther King, the great civil rights activist. And, indeed, it is no coincidence that the Republican nominee for President was another famed "maverick" and heroic individualist in his own right, the Vietnam War veteran, Sen. John McCain.

In sports, too, Americans admire the legendary accomplishments of individuals who go beyond and achieve what the rest of us cannot even fathom. Even as we speak, Lance Armstrong is making an historic comeback in the Tour-de-France, while Tiger Woods is also returning to the international golf circuit.

This respect and healthy admiration for individual accomplishment is undoubtedly one of the central features that makes America great. I can only hope that we in the U.S. do not forget that. To lose a culture that encourages and promotes heroic individuals who go against the grain and challenge the status quo, who, in the Homeric tradition of Ulysses, transgress and transcend the boundaries and limitations that the rest of us impose on ourselves by virtue of our fears and our herd-mentality—to lose that would be to lose the very heroic spirit that makes America great. To become a nation of conformists who are too afraid to question authority or challenge the odds would be to lose the American Spirit—the heroic pioneer spirit responsible for the very foundation of this frontier nation.

Horizon Cybermedia is a modest attempt to take on the challenges of the 21^st century in the sphere of new media. By no means do we consider ourselves to be a news media organization in the vein of CNN or Fox News. We are, rather, a small digital media shop that aspires to produce quality digital media content to meet a growing demand on the internet. We are a modest operation that aspires to operate by adherence to a code of ethics and a principle of integrity and honesty.

Please continue to support our operation. Visit us at http://www.explorationtheseries.com, where you can view continually updating episodes of our flagship film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar. Here's looking forward to the rest of the century (and beyond?) as we continue to grow and change to meet the challenges that confront us!

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

Orwellian Rhetoric

In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the State brainwashes the public with slogans such as:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The government apparatus is described in the novel in the following terms:

They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs.
- George Orwell, 1984, Part 1, Chap. 1

This is an example, in Orwell's novel, of how words are used to signify the opposite of what they mean in normal conversation. The words are redefined to mean their opposites. This is what I refer to as Orwellian rhetoric—the deceptive use of language to conceal the true agenda of those who speak the words.

In his essay Politics and the English Language, Orwell describes the current state of English prose, especially with reference to politics, as follows:

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of WORDS chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of PHRASES tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

Orwell goes on to talk about semantics as follows:

Many political words are similarly abused. The word FASCISM has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words DEMOCRACY, SOCIALISM, FREEDOM, PATRIOTIC, REALISTIC, JUSTICE, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.
. . .
Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like [these] . . . are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: CLASS, TOTALITARIAN, SCIENCE, PROGRESSIVE, REACTIONARY BOURGEOIS, EQUALITY.
- George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

Horizon Cybermedia is about embracing the truth in the medium of art and cinema. When we talk about "TRUTH," in no way do we intend it in the deceptive vein of Orwellian rhetoric. Rather, we mean it in the sense of the dictionary meaning of the word, namely:

1 a archaic : FIDELITY, CONSTANCY b : sincerity in action, character, and utterance
2 a (1): the state of being the case : FACT (2) : the body of real things, events, and facts : ACTUALITY (3) often capitalized : a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality b : a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true <truths of thermodynamics> c : the body of true statements and propositions
3 a : the property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality b chiefly British : true 2 c : fidelity to an original or to a standard
4 capitalized Christian Science : GOD
— in truth : in accordance with fact : ACTUALLY
- Merriam-Webster Dictionary

One of the quotations that inspires our operation is the following quote from John F. Kennedy:

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

Check out our ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar at our website http://www.explorationtheseries.com and please feel free to invite your friends and family to check it out as well. The current episode explores the Wine Country region of Sonoma County, CA. Future episodes will take you to Calcutta, India; to Half Moon Bay, CA, and to many other fascinating destinations.


Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

Brain-Dead Authoritarians: Why Questioning Authority is a Good Thing

If there is anything that the last 8 years of the Bush administration might have taught us, it is that in order for our society to function as the healthy democracy envisioned by the Founding Fathers, we need more people to question authority and fewer people blindly to obey authority.

Let me say, first and foremost, that in no way is this an advocacy for any form of violent or illegal activity that might cause harm to innocent lives or the destruction of public or private property.

What I am suggesting is that conscientious members of society need to be driven by their conscience and good sense into questioning the actions and motivations of public officials and holding them publicly accountable. That is the basis and crux of any functioning democracy and is necessary for our society to remain free and equal, as opposed to allowing our civil liberties to be compromised or unscrupulous opportunists to amass wealth and power at the expense of the naïve public who fail to call their actions and agendas into question.

Public officials are not kings or dictators or gods. They are politicians elected to office by the will of the electorate. As such, they are obligated and accountable to the public. Which means that they must never be blindly obeyed, as they would be in some authoritarian regime under martial law, as, for example, in the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran or the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-Il. Rather, they must be questioned and held accountable, especially when they appeal to public paranoia or mass hysteria or xenophobia to further their political agendas, as we have seen during the Bush administration.

Following the 9/11 attacks, it is a matter of historical record and indisputable fact that the Bush administration pretty blatantly exploited public paranoia and mass hysteria associated with the potential for future terrorist attacks to further a political agenda that has since been exposed as shockingly immoral and depraved—an agenda that included such policies as preemptive military invasion, detention and incarceration of terrorist suspects without charges or a trial, torture and warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens—the quintessence of what might well be described as a reign of terror of Orwellian dimensions.

However, the simple fact remains that the only reason that the Bush administration was able to get away with what they did so blatantly, leaving the rest of us, retrospectively, to gnash our teeth in futility, was that no one in the opposition had the guts or spine to question the authority of the Bush White House. Everyone was scared into submission. In spite of street protests against the Iraq War, which appear to have had limited impact on the Bush administration's policy-making other than to justify their authoritarian stance even further, no one in the corridors of power or the press or media had the guts to question authority at the appropriate time.

Of course, now the press and media are full of scandalous exposés concerning the corruption of the Bush administration, but what good is that, after the damage has already been done and countless lives have been destroyed? It's too late and is of little consequence in retrospect. Hindsight is always 20/20, but it appears that foresight is completely lacking. All that we have is the delayed response of a gutless oppostion.

And what is the solution that the electorate apparently prescribes to the errors and excesses of the near-totalitarian Bush administration? To bestow totalitarian-like powers of unquestioned power and authority to future administrations, thereby repeating the cycle of unquestioned authoritarianism resulting from unchecked political power, followed by the teeth-gnashing and recriminations that are invariably too late.

What is required, rather, is for tough, conscientious individuals to question authority at the right time and not to wait until after the deed has been done. Public officials should be held accountable for their policies as an ongoing part of the democratic process rather than after they have abused their unchecked, unquestioned powers to such a degree that the only option appears to be popular revolt or widespread insurrection, as in Iran recently. Rather, when conscientious individuals question authority as a part of the democratic process, that precludes the possibility of mass insurrection, because authority is always kept in check and held accountable.

Let's keep in mind that the number one excuse cited by Nazi war criminals indicted during the Nuremberg trials was that they were blindly following orders—obeying the authorities without question. One wonders, if enough members of Hitler's National Socialist Party had the cojones to question authority by following their conscience, whether Nazism might have been as successful as it was in its path to conquest and genocide.

The bottom line is that questioning authority is not only a good thing for the body politic and for the health of the democracy, it is good for the mind and soul of those who regularly question authority—because it means both following the promptings of one's conscience as well as actively thinking creatively and out-of-the-box. The other option, essentially, is to succumb to the brain-dead, vegetative state of blind obedience to authority—to turn into a soulless, brainless permanent fixture of the establishment like so many of the gutless, soulless, spineless elected officials who fail to act when action is called for and whom the rest of us—the average citizenry—can thank for such recent catastrophes as Hurricane Katrina, the collapse of Wall Street and the economy and the scandals of the Bush White House.

Horizon Cybermedia is about encouraging one to think creatively and out-of-the-box through the medium of art and cinema. While in no way do we seek to promote or encourage any sort of violent or illegal activity, we do believe that questioning authority is both healthy and necessary for a functioning democratic society to flourish and grow, as opposed to stagnate and die through blind submission to the often-erroneous decrees of elected public officials. We believe that it is important to penetrate the Orwellian rhetoric of political opportunists and to question the agendas of politicians in order to keep society free and alive and to enable the individual to stay quick-witted and sharp-minded.

Do check out our ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar, at our website, http://www.explorationtheseries.com, which is continually updated with exciting, fresh media content. Currently showing is a film on my recent excursion to the Wine Country—Sonoma County, CA—and coming soon is a film about the intriguing city of Calcutta, India.


Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

Democracy and Simple Minds

If you ask people, “What is the number one threat to democracy today?” some might answer “the Taliban” or “Al Quaeda” or “Osama bin Laden” while others might suggest it's the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran or the Kim Jong-Il regime in North Korea. But while all of these are profoundly evil and threats to democracy in their own right, I have a slightly different opinion.

Personally, I think that the biggest threat faced by all democratically elected governments the world over is the pervasive culture of dumbing down and simplifying political discourse to a level that is readily understood by the simplest of minds. Namely, reducing complex political ideas into slogans, buzzwords and labels just so that they can appeal to the average electorate, the majority of which may well be untutored in the niceties of social and political issues.

By dumbing down complex ideas, one creates the illusion of being comfortable and secure in one's political choices without having to perform the difficult tasks of questioning the political rhetoric or digging deeper into the political agendas and ideas of our elected officials—which are vital and critical elements of any functioning democracy. Instead, we are encouraged not to think for ourselves and to let politicians do the thinking for us while they feed us a steady stream of meaningless Orwellian doublespeak that numbs the brain into a catatonic stupor, while they do pretty much whatever they like, unburdened by such trifles as public accountability.

The media is probably the biggest purveyor of this culture of simplified political rhetoric. While force-feeding their invariably skewed and simplified version of current events down our throats on a daily basis, they have no qualms about marginalizing any genuine political discourse when they fail to comprehend the issues and ideas that they are confronted with. And because the media holds the biggest megaphone in our culture, their dumbed-down version of reality usually ends up being the most influential.

If this principle applies to the media, then it applies even more so to political advertising, which thrives on this very process of dumbing down and simplifying ideas to make them palatable and comprehensible to the public. Take the case of the 2004 Presidential elections, the results of which were the direct result of the culture of simplified and dumbed-down political discourse. The most obvious example of this principle is the “swiftboating” of John Kerry by the Bush Presidential campaign—in which a decorated Vietnam War veteran was systematically publicly defamed by a dishonest ad campaign, while the public, apparently, lacked the necessary sophistication to see through this shameful display of political chicanery.

Anyone who takes a look at the history of democratic institutions worldwide has to come to the conclusion that democracy has everything to do with highly sophisticated, complex ideas and modes of thinking. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are themselves the products of the “Western Enlightenment” and are inspired by the works of such Enlightenment thinkers as John Locke and Thomas Paine. And going even further back in history to the origins of Western democratic thought—it is no coincidence that democratic ideas were conceived in Athens, Greece, which was, at the time, the foremost center of Classical learning, producing such minds as Socrates, Plato (though he expressed profound disillusionment with Athenian democracy in his works) and Aristotle.

The foundation of any functional democracy is the exchange of complex ideas. Communication at a sophisticated level is directly at odds with tyranny or dictatorship, which is rooted in state-enforced dogma or dictates that go unquestioned and unreasoned. Without a functional political discourse in society, involving the sophisticated exchange of ideas, what inevitably follows is a scenario where you have political power concentrated in the hands of a few, namely, oligarchy or totalitarianism, while the media tells you how and what to think because you are discouraged from thinking for yourself. This leads directly to a scenario where advertising wins elections—the campaign with the most advertising dollars inevitably wins through sheer brute force, as opposed to intelligent political debate or discourse. What that means is that political offices are for sale to the highest bidder.

If one cannot think for oneself, then one cannot ask the difficult questions—which is the core of the democratic process. One unquestioningly accepts the status quo and the undisclosed agendas of political appointees and elected officials. Tough questions can only truly be considered in a genuinely democratic society, in which one has the freedom to express oneself without the threat of political reprisals.

Horizon Cybermedia is about trying to raise the level of public awareness through art and cinema. We are unapologetic in our attempts to try to encourage people to think for themselves and to ask tough questions. Check out our website at http://www.explorationtheseries.com for continually updating content with fresh, new and interesting ideas.


Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

Conflicting Value Systems: The Paradox at the Heart of the American Dream

We in the United States pride ourselves in being a society that is able to assimilate and include people of every ethnic group, cultural or religious background, belief or value system. The reason being that the Founding Fathers of this great nation had a profound, inspired vision—a vision of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic inclusion—a vision of all of mankind working together for a brighter future, free from the bonds of political tyranny or religious persecution or ethnic discrimination.

However, the important thing to keep in mind is that the vision of the Founding Fathers—a vision that gives us the remarkable documents that are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States—was a vision that was rooted in a specific value sysem that they shared and agreed upon. Namely, a value system that values freedom, inclusion, religious tolerance, multiculturalism—i.e. the "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and, as stated in the Pledge of Allegiance, "with liberty and justice for all."

The assumption here is that other people—the people whom we want to assimilate into the union—share in this vision and this value system.

But what if they don't? What if the people who seek to be assimilated or included believe in some form of authoritarianism or totalitarianism that seeks to deny the rights and freedoms of others while imposing their own value system on them? What if they happen to be, for arguments' sake, religious authoritarians or bigots or anarchists or proponents of totalitarianism or believers in chaos and mob rule? What if they engage in discriminatory practices or political witch-hunts? What if they practice cannibalism, human sacrifice or other criminal activities?

Surely, by including such people into our union, we undermine the vision of the Founding Fathers? By including authoritarians or bigots into our society, we contribute to making our society a little more authoritarian and bigoted. By inviting tyrants or anarchists into our midst, we contribute to making our society a little more tyrannical or chaotic, as the case may be. By giving credence to those who do not share our values, we undermine the value system at the core of the U.S. Constitution—the vision of the Founding Fathers—namely the vision of equality, life, liberty and justice for all.

However, what is the cost of excluding such people from our union? By excluding those whom we deem to be unfit for inclusion—those whom we deem not to share in our vision or our value system—are we, in effect, guilty of undermining our own vision of universal inclusion and liberty from within? Do we become authoritarians and bigots ourselves when we seek to protect our vision of inclusion and liberty from other authoritarians and bigots (or, rather, those we deem to be authoritarians and bigots)? Are we imposing our value system on others when we seek to protect our values of inclusion and acceptance from those who seek to impose their value system on us?

This scenario recurs only too often in U.S. history—all the way from the Salem witch-hunts of the 1690's, in pre-Revolutionary America, when over a hundred innocents were accused and detained, and several of them, executed, on the grounds of suspicion resulting from mass hysteria over witchcraft; to the Red Scare and the McCarthy trials of the 1940's and '50's, when thousands of American citizens were black-listed, detained and executed on the unproven, and often unfounded, suspicion of being Communist-sympathizers; all the way down to the Bush administration's post-9/11 hard-line policies, when the administration felt itself compelled to resort to such policies as preemptive military invasion, preemptive detention and incarceration and even torture and warrantless wiretapping, all on the grounds of national security—the watchword in such cases presumably being, "better safe than sorry."

But before we condemn those whose actions we find disagreeable, we must honestly consider whether, given the same circumstances, any of us would have acted any differently. How many of us are truly that noble and self-sacrificing that we would place national interest and the values and vision of the Founding Fathers above personal interest and expedience or the furthering of our own careers, even at the expense of the lives of others?

I guess that is the basic paradox at the heart of the American Dream—sometimes the cost of defending that dream from those who would seek to undermine or destroy it is so great that we end up undermining and destroying the dream ourselves. But perhaps it is better to have a vision, even if one fails to live up to it, than not to have any vision at all.

Horizon Cybermedia is dedicated to a vision of freedom and artistic self-expression that is rooted in truth and the highest of values and standards. We aspire to live up to and fulfill that vision and we look forward to your support in enabling us to do so. Do check out our website at http://www.explorationtheseries.com and spread the word about us by inviting your friends and neighbors to check out our website as well.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.