Social Studies Magic Mirror

 

Get your Social Studies Magic Mirror now!

No, it’s not the same stupidity mirror that’s been making people incoherent since time immemorial, no, it’s… it’s a new one, it’s Transdimensional!

 

Not Just What You Hate, Please

 

There are some traps in this life, And I think one of them Is to define everything only negatively. Like, sometimes we spend too much time thinking only on what something is not, and not what it is. Like thinking about what is not cool, and never about what is cool.

As an example of defining things negatively, let’s think of how we define “play”, in the sense of children playing. It seems easier to say what it is not: we tend to say “just playing”, like, as if play is something that is “not working”, “not studying”, “not quite real”, “not immediately useful” and etc. But children understand what “play” means before they understand concepts like working, studying, useful, real, etc.

If we avoid this “not this”, “not that” and then try to define “play” for what it “is”, we go to a much more interesting line of thought, don’t we? If we only think of negatve, we may end up living our life with the sole intent of “not being like those losers” and end up not really adding nothing to nobody.

Of course it influences our vision of the world at large. Think about those American students who are defending Hamas and Hezbollah, and totally overlooking the power and influence of Iran. They shouldn’t be marching for homophobic misogynist criminals.

When you really want something, the first natural thing to do is to find the best place to start it. If people care for woman rights, gay rights, workers rights, the best place to start building this new world is where in fact it already started: in the western culture, in countries like America and Israel. These seeds will not grow in fundamentalist extremist Islamic authoritarian regimes.

But as I say, people a lot of times think too little about what they really want, and too much about what they hate, so they can’t accept that a better world starts in western countries, because these Western countries have some sins in their back, are “Imperialist” countries.

Not being able to see that both good and bad things happened in the “West” leads only to hate and to some blind allegiance to any form of “negation of Western culture”, even when they have nothing positive to bring. The state of mind of the people who brought Africans as slaves to America and the state of mind of the people who fought against slavery were not the same state of mind, were not branches of the same tree.

And these stereotypes, against the West as a whole, against Israel, that make some people so complacent with extremists, turn these people against themselves. In the end, these students are defending the opposite of what they claim to defend.

The way these students see Israel as a “colonial” state comes from a stereotype: People going from Europe – although they didn’t come all from Europe – to a third World place, well, it has to be “colonialism”. But this was a very different story, of a people who once had a home land and were exiled for almost two thousand years – and it was not their first exile – and lived as second class people, to say the least, in a lot of places, until they got their right to go back to the only real home they ever called their own.

You may say now that this story does not satisfy you, but it is wrong to stimulate terror because of this vision of yours. You have to remember that this is a country founded almost 80 years ago, after the slaughter of 6 million Jews, in a moment when all the countries in the UN agreed that this centuries old claim for the land was valid. You can’t go back in time. The land was divided in two, for two people, and the Jews built a country and now have millions of people living there. If you care for peace at all you have to accept that. It’s History.

            Now, it seems that even the people who don’t say they want to destroy Israel, don’t say they like terrorist groups, just say they want an immediate end of the War, “just stop right now”, not seeing difference between both sides, or evevn blaming Israel, maybe they too are thinking too much of what they hate, and too little about what they love.

            Of course everybody hates war, but to see if somebody is right or wrong, we must also think about our definition of peace. The definition of peace for Israel is people living their lives, being productive and happy, free of terrorism. The definition of peace for the extremists, doesn’t go much beyond this: a land, and someday a World, free of Jews.

            Yes, people are dying, and it is a tragedy. Because I care for life, I’ve been thinking about the meaning of the word “kill”. Put in a simplistic way, it must be “to cause the death of someone”. Well, I’ve been thinking about the factors that are involved in the death of Gazan civilians.

            Missiles have been fired against the North of Israel for months, and people had to evacuate from there. If they didn’t abandoned their homes – and they are tens of thousands –  so many of them would have died. Israel warns the people in around their enemies before striking against terrorists, but these people are encouraged by their “leaders” to stay home, not leave.

            So, when there is more than one actor involved in something that is causing death, we could say kill is “taking part in an action that causes death”. This action is War. Now, Why and with what intention is each side taking part on this action?

One side takes part because it wants a country to cease to exist, the other because it’s being attacked and suffered the worst and most heinous attack in its History by people who really want to destroy it. The stated goal of one of the sides is “end Israel”, killing most Jews as possible, no matter how many Palestinians die in the process. The other side’s stated goal is to destroy a terrorist organization doing their best to have less civilians killed. It’s easy, when we look from a world where war doesn’t exist, to judge a people for whom war is, unfortunately, something real

Imagine there is something coming in your direction, a giant missile loaded of pure hatred, with the intention of destroying you and everything that you love. The World could have stopped this missile, but the World didn’t. For instance, the terror organizations have their money in Qatari banks, is the world pressing Qatar to freeze this money?

A lot of people say we must “dissociate” the people of these places from the terror organizations. And I agree: Let’s dissociate them from the terrorists, but since the terrorist’s weapons are not abstract and the blood and bones of the Israelis are real too, I believe that it won’t be enough to just make this “dissociation” in our little hearts then go to sleep in peace.

 What the World does to save these people from brainwashing tyrants who do all they can to turn people into hate machines? The World War II, the 20^th century should have taught us about the danger of totalitarian regimes. We’re too complacent with bloodthirsty dictators as they take total control of the lives of their people, and one day they start attacking someone else.

I hope a third World War never happens, but these dictators are not our friends, they are not our partners. They are not just people who have a different culture and live “a little differently from us”. They will not be changed with handshakes. The World don’t seem to care that the people of certain countries are turned into thought slaves, only remembers them as they die in a war that their leaders provoked.

            Then we go march together with people who are using them to accuse  someone in a political game, using the death of people in a war to defend the groups who are oppressing this people. This only makes things worst and the situation harder to solve.

            To deal with situations, we must be honest about values, what is the society that each side is defending. We look at World War II and see clearly that the values the nazis defended make them the wrong side. Unfortunately, Germans died in the War, but we know who’s fault it is.     They killed 6 millions Jews, but would have it been wrong if the allies were able to step there earlier than they did, and defeated German before they killed 6 millions?

            Hezbollah had a plan called “Conquer the Galilee”, and a lot of things, weapons and gear and structure, were ready for them to invade Israel by the North and make a lot of October 7ths at once. The Idf is now dismantling this structure. Why does a country have an army, after all? To defend it from real threats, not just when total annihilation is too close.

            There is the dilemma of this people who live under extremist organizations – Hamas rules Gaza, like Hezbollah the South of Lebanon. If we keep distant, just talking about death, we can’t do much for them. To defend them from the consequences of the evil actions of their leaders we have to think about life, the life we want for the human being. I don’t ask people to change religion, but I feel free to say that nobody should live ruled by those extremist monsters.

            What is Israel defending? Life. The life of Israelis, while doing their best to act ethically. Ideally, yes, we should care for all human life. But then we would have to have the courage to advocate for the basic freedoms we want for people. Just saying we don’t like the result of wars won’t be enough.

            I hope life is protected the best way possible, and the responsibilities fall where it’s due.

Peace Don't Seem To Go Well With Certain Things

 

Is everything that exists in the Universe good, or does the Universe contains options, for us to choose between good and bad things, good and bad actions? I think we believe we must choose, right? That’s what life is about…

So, there is good and bad. Right and wrong. Some people seem to think that, if we believe solidly in right and wrong, we are lacking empathy, we are failing to see the other’s point of view. But why should we try to have empathy? Because it’s more fair than being blind to the other. “Fair”… or, in other words, “the right thing to do”.

So how to solve this paradox? Well, I think of empathy as seeing something of yourself in the other. Looking for familiar things, things that are common to all mankind. If you show me a picture of a muslin woman holding her baby child, that is familiar to me. But if you show me a terrorist invading a house to burn a family alive, sorry, that doesn’t belong to my world. I will not accept that. It’s not part of the common things we must see in all human beings.

Think. We have a right to believe in something. A right to believe certain things are wrong. We all have things we believe are wrong. And we have a right to talk about it. Of course we must always seek for the essential, avoiding cheap moralism, but yes, we can, and should, talk about right and wrong, otherwise we can’t use our vision of the world to build anything bigger than ourselves… How can we build things if we can’t convince other people of better ways to do things?

And when it comes to people with different cultural background? Do we have a right to talk with them about our vision of right and wrong? Well, if not, we must forget other countries, only try to do something good where we live and be indifferent to the pain in other places of the World.

But of course, if people protest in America and Europe about things that happen in the Middle East, for instance, if people in South America can join north American protests against racism, it’s because we believe all human beings must have something in common, so we can have an opinion about things that happen outside our country.

So why it’s so hard for so many people to have empathy with Israel? Why it’s so hard to look at dictatorships and see responsibility for wars and tragedies? Why is it so easier to blame a modern democracy? The extremist Islamic justification for their deeds come from the idea that Israel shouldn’t be there. I’m definitely not one to go defending everything England ever did along the centuries, but the division of the British Mandate of Palestine seems right. There were too people who claimed the land, both had their reasons, there was space for both, and the land was divided in half. And it was voted by the UN, and everybody voted yes.

So why so much bias against Israel? Some people say Israel is “Imperialist.” Well, obviously you can’t say that it is wrong for Israel to be there because they are Imperialists, and they are Imperialists because they are there wrongly, that would be a circular thought. You say Israel is there for Imperialist reasons, they say they are there because it’s their Historical Land, the only place they ever had a country. It is indeed a land historically connected to Israel, there are ancient documents that proved it, and they indeed were persecuted everywhere else and always prayed to go back there. You can study their prayers, they do say that.

As for the alleged “Imperialist reasons”, when did Israel ever had an Empire? When was Israel anything other than a small country that live by their own resources?

I think people label Israel “Imperialist” simply because they associate Israel with the “Western World”. Well, a lot of Jews went to America, where they prospered more than in any other place during their exile, and they obviously have ties with that country. Also, they try to have good relations with the Democratic World. Nothing strange or criminal in that.

And why would anybody consider all that is “Western” wrong? Mozart wasn’t the Fuhrer, Descartes wasn’t Napoleon. People in the Western World suffered under tyrants, and also found ways to seek freedom.

It seems that there is something in the “Western Culture”, as a whole, in all aspects, that a lot of people consider “Evil”, especially people in the Human Sciences. It’s as if all cultures that are “non-Western” were legitimate expressions of their people, and the Western ones were “artificial” greedy cultures. There is nothing artificial in the Bible, it’s an ancient religious book – good and bad things were done with different interpretations of it – as with all ancient texts – or are the modern aspects of Western Civilization that bother people?

But we are all in the modern world, aren't we? And anyway, no culture, nobody's religion, is a pure manifestation of primal instincts, they are all attempts to direct our energy towards something higher. Also, no culture had, five hundred years ago, ready easy answers to all our modern problems. The challenge is to connect to our essential principles and derive new answers.

Israel is a great example of a nation that respects the old and tries to get the best of the modern world, that respects the spiritual identity of the people at the same time that it builds a democratic and tolerant country.

We shouldn't be conniving with nations that try to impose an old World that can't change even in the smallest detail. That refuse to use reason to dialogue with other nations, to learn with other people's experiences. That will never be tolerant with their own people or consider other nations truly deserving of consideration. That always go in the opposite direction of peace.

The result of not considering those tyrannies wrong is that now we have dictatorships attacking a democracy and we can’t stand firmly on the side of the democracy, because we don’t want to accept the fact that in our modern world there is still a justifiable war to be fought.

Hamas made a diabolic attack on oct 7th killing more than a thousand people in the most horrific way and is still holding hostages. The Houthis attacked with missiles from Yemen, same as the Hezbollah from Lebanon. The world failed to eradicate this terror groups. And now their main financier, Iran, directly attacked Israel with 180 missiles in one day.

But because Israel built a defense system and collaborates with America to neutralize missiles, and built safe bunkers and shelters for their people, and evacuated their northernmost cities, they were able to protect themselves from the worst consequences of the last attacks.

The other side is not so worried, they will not build shelters for their population, only for the leaders. They will not evacuate the areas that will be attacked. In fact, Israel sent thousands of messages telling the population of Lebanon to leave the South because they were going to attack the terrorist bases in the area, but the leaders of those places encourage the people not to leave. Then, obviously, the civil casualties will be higher than we would like, no matter how ethically Israel works.

But most of the press doesn’t seem to be seeing all that is happening, they just count the dead. And people either blame Israel for existing and say that they deserve all the horror, or just want it all to stop, want the world to go back to a peace that never really existed in the middle east, a peace that they never bother to check if it’s really there, and don’t actively work for.

Because we should defend freedom. As I said before, of course I don’t want any third World War, but we must state clearly that we consider dictatorships, tyrannies, simply wrong. Otherwise we are just letting the evil grow, and crying for an easy imaginary peace when it all explodes.

We should face the truth, there are countries that are directing their energy and resources to the destruction of others , that always say No to peace.

I wish we lived in an universe where the civil population of countries ruled by violent leaders was safe from harm, but obviously, in reality, this is very hard to achieve, especially if the World turns a blind eye.

Why is it so hard to take a stand against these tyrants? Well, some of the people bought an ideology sold by teachers who spend all the times seeing only the bad things in Western Society.

Some other people seem to like to imagine that the peace we have in the Western world is the “normal”, and the wars in other parts of the world are aberrations, and it would be very easy for everybody to just have the peace we have here, in an instant.

These people don’t give the proper weight to the news of authoritarian theocrats gaining more and more power, or even to armies of terrorists growing. How come that after two World Wars in the beginning of the 20^th century, the Cold War, we so quickly forgot that this world is dangerous, at least while we have violent tyrants with power?

Even seeing all that happened to the Jews in world war II, and seeing antisemitism gaining force in the Arab World, how did we slipped so fast to a kind of a dream where all we have to do for peace is say “I don’t like War”? Sometimes it seems this people just want the “bad news” to stop so they can go back to sleep…

And the fact that now these two groups of people, the ones that hate the Western World and especially Israel, and the ones that just want all to “just stop”, a lot of times seem to be marching together, signals that something strange is happening. Like “peace” marching side by side with the ones that hate peace the most.

I too want peace, I pray it comes as soon as possible. But if we want peace, leaders that swear death to other countries, government that finance terrorist groups, must be our bigger enemies. There is nothing wrong in being their enemy, you are not harming the population of those countries. On the contrary, you should wish for them the same freedom you enjoy. The freedom that those leaders will not give, now or ever.

We cannot use “empathy” as an excuse to be silent about what we know is good, and what we know is bad, what we wish for ourselves and others, that should be the same, and what we don’t. Tyranny is bad, and there is nothing wrong in having a clear vision of right and wrong, good and bad. That’s what we need the most.

 

 

 

 

 

One-sided Peace and Fingerpointing

 

I think all journalists, when start talking about the war Israel is in, should start by “the war, that was started by Hamas, who didn’t surrender yet… etc etc” Isn’t this phrase right?

If you have a war happening somewhere, how to decide where do you stand? Obviously nobody in sane mind “likes” wars, but are wars never justifiable? Like world war II, to which we look back and see clearly that someone needed to be defeated… So, if someone attacks you, should you just say “please, stop”? Or if you strike back, should you stop when you start winning, because then obviously the enemy has more losses? Even if the enemy doesn’t give the slightest signal that he will stop attacking you? Even if he is still attacking you? Even if you still have soldiers dying every week?

But how can I say Hamas attacked first? Because Israel wasn’t attacking in October 6^th. But some people will not accept that, because they say Israel was wrong to defend it’s borders, to watch if someone was coming in with guns… That is, in the end, that Israel shouldn’t even be there… Because if we consider that Israel has a right to exist and defend itself, and we read a little about what happened on October 7^th, we wouldn’t be so shocked that a war started that day.

What happened in October 7^th is the kind of thing we obviously must say “it just can’t keep going, it just can’t happen anymore”. But is war the only solution? Well, who is stepping up to find another way to make Hamas definitely stop?

The press only shows the attacks that come from Israel, most people don’t even know how many rockets were fired by the Hezbollah from Lebanon, don’t even know tenths of thousands of Israelis that live in the North of the country had to leave their homes because of the rockets. But the other side don’t evacuate their civilians – on the contrary, they keep them right in the fire line.

There are still Israeli hostages in Gaza. There was a negotiation for the release of the hostages a few weeks ago and the world didn’t stop to see, didn’t seem to care. Maybe because they would have to face the fact that Hamas is real, and active.

The press speaks a lot about “proportion” and not about “necessity”. What is “proportion”? If someone invades your house with a gun swearing to kill your family, and already killed a loved one, and there is only one cop in your city you can call, will you tell him, “please don’t come with a better gun than his, for the sake of proportion”?

Yes, Palestinian and Lebanese civilians dying is something extremely tragic, but can the world at least open the mouth to say “things like Hamas just can’t exist anymore”? Can the press show the Hamas leaders saying that when their people die is a good thing, because they become martyrs? How can the world find a solution, if it cares, without facing the facts?

There is a lot of pressure to be on the side of the “Palestinians”. Aren’t you on the side of the poor? Aren’t you on the side of the underdog? If we see on Tic Toc sad things, then you know yhere is trouble in the world, and you may start to think what could people do to make it better. Of course it’s easier to just point your finger against Israel, than seeing the whole complex situation.

Israel is a country, alone in the middle east among  Islamic countries that are getting more and more extreme in their ideology, as if that tiny country – Israel – was to blame for something, God knows what, since these Islamic countries have all they need to prosper, and their leaders are indeed very rich. But these leaders, especially the leaders of Iran, support attacks like October 7^th,  , and Israel needs to be able to tell their children that it won’t happen again. In fact, one of the reasons a lot of Jews went to Israel was to say that the Holocaust won’t happen again.

So Israel must defend somehow, diminish the power their enemies have to attack. The idea that Israel is an aggressor state by nature is a lie. And if you use a lie as foundation to build your thinking, your whole thinking will be a very strange building.

In fact, there are defenders of gay rights and woman rights supporting terrorists who kill gays and women because it’s “their culture”. So, the Palestinian and Israeli homosexual and women seem to owe something to a group of men who hate everybody except their racist, homophobic, misogynic and extremely rich leaders. Young people who obviously don’t want to be violently attacked in their homes are taught to pretend they wouldn’t mind, if it was for “justice”.

            Such a monstrous building, where nothing fits nothing, can only have been built upon lies. And they are big lies about how the world works. As if only white people have had empires – and by the way, the Jews never had an empire, and just started being considered “perfectly white Europeans” very recently in human history. Why don’t you get into your time machine and go tell the nazis that Jews are “white Europeans”?

And anyway, even if you could divide the world between rich countries as bad and poor countries as victims, you can’t say everybody in a rich country is bad – poor people there suffered too – and everybody in poor countries are victims – their powerful people are exploiters too.

If you say all your “rich” countries only have perpetrators and all your “poor” countries only have victims you silence all the normal men and women and protect all the powerful. Because the normal men in the rich countries can’t stand for their beliefs, because they are all bad, and the normal men in the poor countries won’t be defended from evil leaders because it is wrong to say their leaders are evil, because these countries only have victims. That’s a perfect way to defend all the power in the planet.

What if instead of pretending only “white” countries had empires – ever heard of the Ottoman Empire? And what is China? – we looked at ways of doing things, that can be right or wrong? What if we realize that all through History, and everywhere, there were people who just wanted to go to the top, just wanted to fulfill their own wishes, pleasing the ones who are on top and making it harder for possible competitors, and pretending they have nothing to do with it if something bad happens to someone. And there are people who are brave enough to do their best to live according to good principles. At least in a democracy, the brave people have more chances to try to change things.

Standing on the side of Israel is accepting there are no magical solutions, no “white countries” that should cease to exist and everything would be fine, no tyrannical governments who will stop mistreating people if we are “nice” to them, no terrorist organization who “just want to attack their oppressors”. No violent crimes that are “not really crimes”, no “alternative form of government”, no “revolution” that will magically change the World. No war that can be stopped by the side who was attacked, before the side that attacked at least stops to attack.

It’s accepting that this World that we have is the World we have to deal with, these are the countries that exist and they are not going anywhere, and there is no other way to solve things than holding people and governments accountable for their deeds. No way to change the World except doing our best to act more ethically in all spheres. No other form of Justice besides good old case-by-case impartiality.

But of course it is easier to point to someone and blame them for everything that is wrong, then all that people have to do is to say, “we are not them”. Then you don’t have to check your own life and decisions, your own actions, don’t have to really question if you are being ethical or just climbing to the top, on your job or your college. You don’t have to be creative and find new solutions, no, all you have to do is scream “We are not them”. It defines us as human beings.

I’m white but I am not like the “white oppressors” – and why? Because you really do your business in a different way? No, we didn’t really think about it, “we are not like them because we hate them”. I’m not like Israel or the Jews who defend it – the vast majority – and being “not them” makes me a good person.

Then people don’t have to think hard about a World that is complex, and obviously – and unfortunately – is not at peace, and will not magically be at peace if one, and only one of the sides stop fighting. Do you know any other way to make aggressors stop attacking that wasn’t tried? Peace proposals? Humanitarian aid? All that was tried. Do you need any proof that terrorists use their people as human shields? Have you made a research on that? Do you wonder why mainstream journalists never say “human shield”? It’s not a subjective term… But who cares about all that? “We are not them” so we are fine, we can scream it and go back to life as usual.

As if we fixed anything…

I see that there are different levels of “protesting this war”. On one end, there are people who literally support Hamas and Hezbollah and all that they do, I the other end people who just say they care for Palestinians and don’t want to see more suffering. But by marching together, they give a big sign to the Terrorist groups that they can continue, they will be protected.

Maybe this people who “just want it to stop” should talk to the people on the other end, the people who want Israel to be destroyed by any means. Maybe they should have a conversation about peace, maybe that would be a good start…

Maybe it just sounds crazy in the beginning

 Because i don't go half an hour (in fact it's much less, i realised) without thinking in the israeli hostages and their families  and because i do feel for the palestinians too, i've been praying for this deal.

But there is a lot of talk about things that, i must confess, are not my specialty. For instance, talks about israeli military presence in the border with egypt and gaza. What do i know about military strategy, what do i know about corridors? Nothing.

But what happened this morning is that i was scratching the internet for some news on the matter, hoping for good news of any kind, and i stumbled on someone saying something about the presence of international forces in gaza.

And i was like, Wait! Is that on the table?

Is that possible? That international forces go there and overlook it? I mean, if everybody is so worried about it all, it may be a good idea.

Usa, egypt, germany, people who say they care for peace.

I am not talking about leaving it all to the UN. Let's face it, the UN represents everybody but sometimes nobody. Suppose that with the best intention countries agree to "help Palestine" but the countries don't go there, just a sub-organization within the UN. So, if they fail or even do wrong (Yes, unrwa) it is a fail in the organization, not responsability of the countries.

Why the countries don't go there?

Would this break palestinian sovereignity, or offend the arab world? Come on, aren't we seeing what is happening? What sovereignity the people of gaza have? Ruled by a Terror group that is only feeding hatred, war and misery? They should start, from zero, to build real sovereignity, and they will need help. 

And the arab countries didn't even let in palestinian people who wanted to escape from the war.

So come on! Why not bring the whole world to gaza? For peace.

Press, too. Arab, israeli, american, english press, everybody. Check what is hapenning to those people. Are they in need? Are people trying to help? Are kids being turned suicidal? Are israelis doing something wrong?

As i say, i am not an expert in politics, but... is that on the table?

As I Read The News Today

 

             The World Always tries to push us stereotypes. Stereotypes to tell us who is smart, stereotype to tell us who is cool. Of course you can have a general idea of what kind of people you think is cool, but stereotypes are external appearances, superficial judgements.

            Even our political views are dominated by stereotypes inherited from last century, when there was a war against the communists and the capitalists. A lot of people divide humanity in two kinds: the revolutionary, who believes “the people” can take all the political power and rule it with iron hands in favour of the poor, and the hard working meritocrat, who believe that the increasing of production will automatically solve everything.

            But in the new times we are living, this black and white division in two sides is kept alive just because we got used to it, not because it makes a lot of sense. A good example to think about is China. Is it communist or capitalist? It’s capitalist to make money and communist to control people.

            China shouldn’t be supported by our “left wing” people, because it exploits the workers as much as it can driven by profit alone. And shouldn’t be supported by our “right wing” people, because it suppresses a lot of individual freedoms that right wing people use to say they defend. Even individual meritocracy. Or don’t you think the owners of the most profitable factories are friends with the top guys of the Communist Party? Yes, China is still ruled by the Communist Party.

            So you see, we look around and judge our neighbours based on a two-side stereotype and don’t stop to think if it even applies to the World. We don’t stop to think about the strange alliances, the strange things that happen in the Globe.

Russia makes a lot of business with capitalists in the world, and it’s ruled by an ex-KGB agent – KGB was the Soviet Secret Service, communist – that have good friendship with far-right leaders. The Arab States are far from communist, they are profit-driven tyrannies.

And Russia, a lot of Arab States, together with China and North Korea, are in a kind of Alliance against the Western Countries, dividing the World, yes, but with a criterium that is dictatorships versus democracies, and not simply state versus production.

Something is indeed happening in the World. The Iranian authorities – Iran has a Supreme Leader, is perhaps the most prominent of the Arab theocracies – are making no secret that they don’t like the West. They openly consider not only Israel, but also America, as mortal enemies.

Of course is not simply about America. It’s a set of values that they want to fight against. Democracy, individual freedoms. Freedom of speech, woman rights, the value of the Constitution of a Country, that can’t simply be ignored by the leaders.

I think people in the West should take a stand against this plan of Iran. The leftist people definitely can’t support the end of all rights that people conquered. They must answer: when they support Arab dictators, are they saying that the fate of gays in this countries is to be killed, and woman to be killed if they don’t “walk the line”? Is it Forever, or do they think these extremist will have a victory against the western capitalist oppressors, and then one day be substituted by a lighter version? If so, tell it to them.

And right wing people, people who believe in work and production, can’t support these guys either. Can’t support people who want the death of America. Or Israel.

After the Jews gave us the idea that all true morals come from the same Singular Source of All Goodness, laying the foundations for our best moral principles – and after devoted, idealistic moderate, spiritualized individualists gave us the foundations for all the Science that support our industries – are we going to play Vikings to our friends, turn a blind eye to dictatorships, and support Israel only to the extend that it doesn’t get it the way of that business trip to Dubai?

Of course I know that the world of production has a lot of challenges and I am not saying that it should commit any idealistic suicide, but think. Just as it is not in the best interest of the Industry of a free country, in the long term, to have business with people who use slave or semi-slave labour, it’s also not in it’s best interest to ignore when foreign billionaires fund revolutionary organizations, colleges and politicians in the West.

We must give signs that there are values that the Western World will always defend. One of the most basic is the self-determination of our Democratic States. Our States must be respected.

Right after the current War between Israel and Hamas started – it started with a diabolic attack from Hamas – the Chinese version of Google Maps erased Israel. For a while, it showed the cities but no indication of a Country called Israel. I don’t know how it is now. If they can “erase” a Country, they are definitely saying they won’t respect any of our institutions.

It seems that in the Chinese Communist Party there has been long “philosophic” discussions about “institutions” and “constitution”, coming to the “conclusion” that both can definitely be overlooked if it is in the interest of “the people”. So instead of respecting laws that we inherited from past struggles, we simply choose what kind of people represent “the People”, and then they can do anything.

Of course institutions – and constitutions can evolve – but they are crystallizations of agreements. To give a basic example: we don’t have to discuss, at every generation, if it is acceptable to kill someone just because you don’t like him. Past generations spared us of that, they agreed on the subject and passed it to us in form of law. Law can evolve – with new agreements.

Otherwise it’s just “I know what is best for everybody so I can do whatever I want”. These laws and institutions keep our society minimally stable so we can work and try to live in peace. When right wing people that refers to themselves as “conservatives” attack basic institutions of Western Countries, I don’t think the dictators of the World, who want our ruin, are lamenting.

It’s thinking, discussing the we can, inside the institutions, like the institution of a Democratic State, change things, have new ideas, try to make life better. Maybe what these tyrants want is not something new, on the contrary. They are trying to preserve the old domination of few over the rest, they want to protect the old tyrannical ways from the winds of freedom.

There are good and bad things going on in the Democratic Countries, but in a perfect Dictatorship that is only one thing going on: the desire of the masters. Maybe they fear that if Democracy succeeds, their people will want it. When America got out of Afghanistan, and the Taleban was ready to take the power again, a boy, who was born when the American were there, died tried to get inside an airplane to escape, because he wanted to be a Soccer player and he knew his dream was going to die, all his dreams of freedom would die, under the Taleban. I think of that boy often.

But what is the relation between institutions and freedom? Aren’t they opposite? I don’t think so. Institutions should stablish respect, the ways a person can’t interfere with another. Law should say what kind of interference is acceptable and what is not. Like, “I’ll jump that fence if you are spanking someone in your house, but I know your love life is not my business”.

It’s not about the stereotypes of last century, left and right. It’s about Freedom, that is the stand we should take. Do we want the people who live under dictatorships to think we would like to share freedom with them or replace their tyrants with some other kind of tyrants? What is the opposite of throwing homosexuals from a roof? Just say “these people who practice these abominations can be accepted if they become like us”? Or is it full respect, the same rights for everybody? We should think about it.

Right now, there are more than a hundred people who were kidnaped in that diabolic attack – some are pacifists, some are students, young people with dreams, fathers, normal people – even children - are still being held hostage by Hamas.

They were kidnaped by a group that dominates Gaza and believes in violence as the only way to achieve any goal, that believes democracy is a Western lie, that people must bend to strict religious laws, and to their leaders, or die.

A negotiation for the release of the hostages is going on right now. How aren’t we all screaming that we need them home now?

The Soap Rain And The Solid Heart

 

Some people say they know a lot about the secret intentions behind everything that happens in the World, the secret connections and such. Some of those theories, conspiracy theories, are really wild, they make people believe that there is a real reality where everything is opposed to we should naturally deduct from the known facts.

            We got kind of used to relating conspiracy theories with the far right in politics, but the recent surge of antisemitism in the left, the delusions of Zionist conspiracies, of the supposed super power of a tiny nation, shows us that conspiracy theories exist in all extremes.

            This kind of theory don’t work with real logics, like real valid deductions from known facts. The only logics it seems to follow is that you should believe that the person who is saying it knows much more than the others. That’s why those theories really gain traction when they are endorsed and validated by rich, powerful and famous people.

            People think, this guy must know something. Then it grows like a snow ball, more and more people believing it. Some people will believe something just because someone who is richer than him seem to believe it, or it could be a teacher in college who you admire. The validation comes not from logic, but from a certain ladder of success, academical for certain people, or financial to others.

            But then a paradox appears. Like, these theories are supposed to tell the truth about the people who secretly rule the world, but the theory is being revealed to you from the upper degrees of a ladder of worldly success. But aren’t the people who rule the world in the upper degrees?

            How people normally “solve” this paradox? Well, the people who get their “secrets” from the academical ladder of success believe the academical world have nothing to do with the world of financial power, and the people who get it from the economic ladder of success seem to believe that these powerful depraved elites who rule the world are not the same people who rule production, they are like, politicians and such, or the people who master the financial stock roulettes.

            But the point is that the academical world, the political world, they need input, money input like every other big thing – the financial roulette needs input too: the stock market sharks are not so self sufficient, they have clients, investors. So, the world of production heavily influences these other spheres of powers

            Now, I am not saying that it is a wrong thing to have success with production or in academia, or in politics, per se, or even in financial investments. I am not a communist and I don’t think having success is wrong per se, but the simple fact that a theory is “revealed” to you by someone who is more successful should never be enough to validate it.

            “This guy must know something” should never substitute logics, real careful reasoning, real valid deductions. We must think for ourselves. Where is it written that the search for truth and the ladder of success must coincide perfectly?

            If we throw logics away, we are erasing the possibilities for understanding between human beings. If you give someone the right to just point – and not have to prove – that “this guy said this but it’s not what he believes” or even “he did this but it is just to hide that” then how can we ever get to peace?

            Of course people lie and do things with weird intentions, but we can see the direction people and institutions are going to, through their action and speeches. You don’t need secret theories, all you need is to enlarge your frame of time. If you see not only what happened this minute but learn about someone’s words and actions through history, then you see the direction things are going.

            I think nobody can rule the world as if he was the screenwriter of one of those very crazy plot twist movies, where everything seems to be going perfectly in one direction and in the end it was all the opposite of what is seemed, because the masters were controlling every little detail, like the exact place a rain drop would fall. People are not gods, if you want something you usually have to push in that direction somehow.

            So, because of paranoia, the belief that common reason and logic are never sufficient to see the direction that things are going, we are depriving the other human beings of a very crucial right: The right of make declarations of principles not only with words but with actions too.

            If my words and your words, your visible actions and my visible actions, don’t have any meaning, then how can we ever solve any problem? We need to believe that our senses and our brains can get us somewhere.

Iran wants to defeat the Western world and they know they can’t pretend to love the western world, so they openly say they hate it. That’s how they will push people to fight for them. The extremist islamists are not even pretending they don’t see their people as nothing more than potential martyrs. They say this openly too.

On the other hand when Israel accepted to release 240 people who committed violence to get 105 innocent hostages back, they made a statement, that they value more life over death. They didn’t see their people as martyrs to be sacrificed in order to defeat the criminals, they released even convicted terrorists and were ready to defend themselves from the consequences of it, because they valued the life of the innocent hostages as individuals.

            There are a lot of lies in the world, that’s true, but if our intention is a better world, we will have to restore some kind of common sense, and we can’t do that by believing in information that is even less proven than what the official channels tell us, just because these “secrets” were revealed to us by people who gained our admiration for reasons that have nothing to do with logic and clearness.

            I have to admit that it is indeed a very complex World. Even one of the Wikipedia founders openly said that the site’s intended neutrality is long gone, and it is absolutely not reliable anymore when it comes to polemic issues. It is depressing, but we are seeing it happen, and we have to face it.

            So what do we do? Right now, what I can offer is this: there are indeed people who can honestly help you to see beyond what the official channels tell. But we have to ask ourselves some questions: are their theories leading us to a situation where we can, slowly and with patience, deduct more and more from the visible world, or are they leading us to a situation where soon nothing will mean nothing, except their “theory”?

            Are they making us increasingly more dependent of them, like, we will just need them more and more to see anything at all, or are they helping us to gain autonomy, to become more and more able to think for ourselves, and to try to dialogue with people who don’t read the same things?

            In other words, are they leading us to freedom or trying to imprison us?