As I always say, I know that there are a lot of things going wrong in the World, and a lot of things that should be working for the benefit of everybody but a lot of times just don’t. I think most of us feel that there are some forces at play, forces that serve goals that are very different from the best for all mankind.
So, some come with
weird conspiracy theories, like old Antisemitic visions of Jews controlling the
World. Well, what I think is that just because things like the theory of relativity
turned out to be very useful in Science, it doesn’t mean that, in all aspects
of our lives, the weirdest a “theory” is, the more we should feel it is true.
On the contrary, I
think that when it comes to human power, we don’t need more and more strange
and unverifiable information, I believe we must clear the dust from before our
eyes, to just see clearly what is in front of us, probably the answers are more
obvious than we think. We just have too much weird information in our heads to
be able to just step back and look at things with clear eyes.
For instance, when it
comes to who controls what, I see things in a simple way. I think that the most
powerful people in Russia are Russian super rich guys and Russian politicians. The
most influential people in Italy are some powerful Italians. The most powerful
people in Muslin Arab countries are powerful Muslin Arabs. The most influential
people in Israel are some Jews. In the United States, it’s super rich Americans
and politicians.
There are more Jews
in the high circles in America than there ever were anywhere – outside Israel,
of course – because America gave them opportunities they never had – but I
don’t think the majority of powerful people in America – that are not Jews –
would let someone else control them, even if that was what the Jews wanted. And
why would you consider that all Jews are taking part on a “plan” commanded by
the few super rich Jews, if you don’t do that with any other people? There are
so many reasons why these conspiracy theories about Jews controlling things
make no sense at all…
Anyway, even knowing
that there are powerful people – that is, people who have much more influence
than the common man – acting violently is the worst thing you can do in a
democracy, because it weakens the power of a set of rules that, even if not
perfect, is meant to give our society other parameters that are not simply the
law of the stronger. If there are no rules, the stronger will prevail, and this
means precisely the most powerful ones.
And the structures of
wrongful power are made not only of money, they are also made of notions that
people in higher positions have more value as human beings than others, they
are made of the power some institutions may have to tell people how much they
are worth, or impose a unique vision of the World and silence all other ideas.
Academic people like
to talk about power. They see all this cobwebs everywhere, that they call
“structure”, “systemic” this, “systemic” that. I think it would be interesting
for them to reason about the power that they have. Think, they are the ones who
give credentials for people to work in the fields that people want to work.
They give the titles
and the honors that people can use to promote a book that they want to sell,
for instance. And how many of the people in International Organizations have beautiful
academic credentials to increase their worth? Also, I don’t know about the rest of the World, but
here in Brazil it seems they want to forbid people without diplomas to work in
more and more jobs that didn’t require it before.
And all this makes
kind of a circle. Because the most influential people in Academia are also the
ones who define the curriculum for Colleges and Schools, and think: when we
hear someone make an analysis of a situation, most of us will give it more
weight if it resounds with something we learned in school or college. It is a
very big power.
I am not against the
existence of Academia, obviously. I think we must have Academia. But I do think
it is very bad when there is one line of thought imposing itself, silencing the
voices of all other possible ideas and lines of thought, as if all the
discussions already had been discussed and there were no more reasonable
objections – this is not true.
And what is the
vision of the World that the Academia has been pushing? Nowadays, it seems that
they are looking at absolutely everything through the notion of “race”. I know
that there has always been racial problems, but when they are talking about
race, instead of thinking on what would be the solutions for the minorities to
prosper more and more within our society, within the law, it seems that they
are offering the idea that the “system” is so crooked that it is not enough to
do your best and help each other.
When they say that an
infraction, or even a crime, committed by someone of an oppressed minority
should not be considered as such, the message is that people have a right to
reject the peaceful way to happiness, even the peaceful way to fight for your
rights. That crime is sometimes the only way.
Well, if the
minorities need to break the law, need to commit crimes, then they will always
need lawyers, then big political movements become the only big salvation. The
individual dimension of life becomes insignificant compared to the importance
of collective and organized struggle. The circle closes. The person who belongs
to a minority should place all his bets in “movements”, nothing else. I think
movements are important for some things, but they should never aim to create
total dependency.
And when it comes to
geopolitical issues, they extend this idea of race to everything, using
concepts like “Imperialism”, to blame the Western World for absolutely
everything that is wrong. It goes like this:
“The evil deeds that
are done by people who we don’t consider as heirs of the Western prosperity,
must not be treated as simple evil, because the Western oppression is directly
or indirectly responsible for everything.”
Because of this
thought, people can’t place in the oppressive leaders of the “non-Western”
World all the responsibility – and fault – that they deserve for their actions.
Also, you see feminists overlooking the fact that some “non-Western” societies
are the most oppressive to women. The same with queer movements, cheering
people who literally murder homosexuals. Putting it shortly, people who say
they want to free people from oppression becoming unable to put any real
responsibility to real dictators. Because they may say “I don’t agree with this
dictator necessarily”, but the big villain is always someone else – the
imperialist – so in practice, nothing can be done against those dictators.
I will propose a
thought experiment that I think is interesting: sometimes, when there is a lot
of confusion in a line of thought, too many contradictions, it is interesting
to notice if some specific assumption is the center of all that contradiction.
Then, just for a moment, consider the possibility that this assumption is not
true. Let’s do it with this assumption:
“The evil deeds that
are done by people who we don’t consider as heirs of the Western prosperity,
must not be treated as simple evil, because the Western oppression is directly
or indirectly responsible for everything.”
Just take this away.
Consider for a minute that the things we see in the World are the result of a far
more nuanced situation. A World where every deed counts, where people are
always responsible for the use of any power that they have, no matter who they
are or where they live. Think like this for a minute.
See the difference. Now,
people who fight for gay rights can be enemy of the greater haters of the gays,
feminists can denounce what happens in the societies in the World that most
oppress women. People who are concerned with exploitation of the poor can
oppose any political leaders in the World that get rich while keeping their
population poor, not only in some places. If you are concerned with how
powerful people can harm the common men, you can oppose tyrannic visions of
Society wherever they appear.
That is, you are
always in favor of what you say you are in favor, and always against what you
say you are against. Wow. Wasn’t it kind of magical?
Also, now, when
talking about a war, you can give the proper weight to the fact that a certain
side started it, like, in the case of the current war between Israel and Hamas,
it should be very simple to see that this war wasn’t there in October 6th,
that Hamas started it in October 7th. And they didn’t surrender or
stop fighting yet.
You can look at
History and see that the war that the Terrorists create is not about land – the
tiny strip that the Jews got of the Middle East when the Empires ended and the
map of the whole World changed – it is a manifestation of a very old feeling
that exists in the Middle East – a hatred against the Jews, that was and is
encouraged by wicked and megalomaniac leaders.
If you were able to
put responsibility on people who dominates regions – like Hamas dominates Gaza
– you would not be talking about numbers of deaths as if the option of real and
safe peace was there for Israel to easily reach. You would see the danger that would
threaten Israel if an attack like that of October 7th went
unresponded. Like a city where that mayor says, “we will not punish crime
anymore, we will just improve the security of buildings”. What happens?
Without all this bias
and preconceptions against Israel, we can see the measures they take to
mitigate civilian harm on the other side. They are fighting an enemy that is
hidden among their own people, and that don’t care for their people. An enemy that uses their own people to create the most cruel dilemma they can for Israel and the
World, making the cost of the war the higher they can.
The powerful people
that created this dilemma – this is a war against Terrorist groups backed and
financed by Iran and Qatar – can slow Israel, but totally stop to fight them
would mean give them everything they want. It would be extremely dangerous to
make the most cruel strategy ever conceived so successful. Violent aggressive
political forces, that use cruelty as a weapon, will never be satisfied with
one particular “victory”.
If the academic
people and most of the press wasn’t turning a blind eye to this “other side”,
if they were talking openly about the ones who created this cruel strategy of
human shields, I think a lot of people in the World would see things
differently.
This is a manifestation
of how academic people do their “best” to show a vision of things that are
happening that fits their general simplistic narrative about the whole World.
With the “West” and Israel as the eternal villains, nothing can be done against
the worst dictators of the World.
Usually people that
have some power and influence don’t want to lose it, they want to amplify it. If the influence and power that the Academic
World has is related to some political agenda, then they will play it rough, to
impose their vision of the World and to make people think that political
ideologies are all that is really important in the World.
And with this idea
that sometimes violent crimes are just an inevitable consequence of something
else, they open the doors to a dangerous relativism, the idea that evil should
not be seen as such, or that maybe there is nothing we can call evil.
In my opinion, there
has been far too little attention to “how” October 7th happened.
People are just talking about numbers, as if one thousand and two hundred
people slaughtered was too little to start a war – I don’t think it is. They
don’t talk about the cruelty, as if “cruelty” was too subjective to be dealt
with – only numbers matter.
But hordes of men
coming and laughing while killing people at random and violating young women,
burning families alive, killing children in cold blood – that matters.
We can’t let biased
political visions prevent us from placing the blame of all the tragedy of war
on the ones who caused it, the same ones who do nothing to make it less tragic
– on the contrary. Why the World can’t answer: if not now, when Hamas will be
dismantled?
I think it is very
dangerous when political or social ideologies becomes infinitely more important
than any rules or common sense that mankind has arrived to along our long
History on this planet. And I don’t think a real peace will come if we consider
half of the World as not really responsible for their deeds. Peace, I think,
will not come if we don’t consider everybody responsible for the use they make
of the power they have, wherever they are.
