"And you can also commit injustice by doing nothing". I read this sentence today and kept my thoughts playing with it for a while. The news are packed with stories about governments around the world trying to fix the misfortunes of this trembling capitalist-consummerist system, to agree on how to stop climate change, on how to -in general- save us from our homemade monsters.
The European Left, that oxymoron empty of new ideas, of any new answer to the ills of the world, is unable to dream. It is trapped by the fear of change, by commitments with the "moderates" -who are they? where do they hide?-, by a comfortable rethoric of social liberalism -more gay rights! fight climate change! end the war!- unable to think big about the human being, about the human experience, about what the hell makes us genuinely happy. Nowadays, nobody would be so blind to see that the system we have created, where we are designed to grow, work for megalocorporations -or their subsidiaries, produce, consume, e-consume, multiply and die is forgetting the bottom line of human life: we weren't meant to be connected to this Matrix. We were meant to enjoy from the simple pleasures, the company of our beloved, the tribal sense of community around the bonfire in a starred night, the feeling of the wind and the light rain in the face, the pleasure of our hands smelling to wet ground and fruits after harvesting them. The joy of enjoying, slowly, from the feast of meats and greens, from the company of others, from their careness, from their desire, from the music bringing us back memories of good old times... But the European left, and the left around the world, doesn't have any imagination, and they shameless stamp a seal of approval to a system that commits many injustices every day, the biggest one being to curtail our right to happiness. "And you can also commit injustice by doing nothing"...
-----------------
The European Left, that oxymoron empty of new ideas, of any new answer to the ills of the world, is unable to dream. It is trapped by the fear of change, by commitments with the "moderates" -who are they? where do they hide?-, by a comfortable rethoric of social liberalism -more gay rights! fight climate change! end the war!- unable to think big about the human being, about the human experience, about what the hell makes us genuinely happy. Nowadays, nobody would be so blind to see that the system we have created, where we are designed to grow, work for megalocorporations -or their subsidiaries, produce, consume, e-consume, multiply and die is forgetting the bottom line of human life: we weren't meant to be connected to this Matrix. We were meant to enjoy from the simple pleasures, the company of our beloved, the tribal sense of community around the bonfire in a starred night, the feeling of the wind and the light rain in the face, the pleasure of our hands smelling to wet ground and fruits after harvesting them. The joy of enjoying, slowly, from the feast of meats and greens, from the company of others, from their careness, from their desire, from the music bringing us back memories of good old times... But the European left, and the left around the world, doesn't have any imagination, and they shameless stamp a seal of approval to a system that commits many injustices every day, the biggest one being to curtail our right to happiness. "And you can also commit injustice by doing nothing"...
-----------------
"Don't ever forget these things:
The nature of the world.
Your nature.
How you relate to the world.
What proportion of it you make up.
That you are part of nature, and no one can prevent you
from speaking and acting in harmony with it, always."
(Marcus Aurelius)
The nature of the world.
Your nature.
How you relate to the world.
What proportion of it you make up.
That you are part of nature, and no one can prevent you
from speaking and acting in harmony with it, always."
(Marcus Aurelius)
An excerpt from a study just-released:
One of the greatest paradoxes in the field of time psychology is the time–emotion paradox. Over the last few decades, an increasing volume of data has been identified demonstrating the accuracy with which humans are able to estimate time. Confronted with this amazing ability, psychologists have supposed that humans, as other animals, possess a specific mechanism that allows them to measure time...Droit-Volet, Gil (July 2009) "The Time-Emotion Paradox". Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009 Jul 12;364(1525):1943-53.
However, under the influence of emotions, humans can be extremely inaccurate in their time judgements (Droit-Volet & Meck 2007). For example, the passage of time seems to vary depending on whether the subject is in an unpleasant or pleasant context. It drags when being criticized by the boss but flies by when discussing with our friends. That is the time–emotion paradox: why given that we possess a sophisticated time measurement mechanism, are we so inaccurate in our temporal judgements when experiencing emotions?
Labels: ciencia
Democracy ain't that bad, afterall
2 Comments Posted by Alex Guerrero on Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 8:08 PM.
An excerpt from Barry Schwartz -the author of "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less":
Here his TED Talk about how more choices make us less happy. He couldn't conclude any other way: "the secret to happiness is low expectations".
"[People] had very low expectations. They had no particular expectation when they only came in one flavor. When they came in 100 flavors, damn it, one of them should've been perfect. And what I got was good, but it wasn't perfect. And so I compared what I got to what I expected, and what I got was disappointing in comparison to what I expected. Adding options to people's lives can't help but increase the expectations people have about how good those options will be. And what this is going to produce is less satisfaction with results, even when they're good results".And instead of a pair jeans -his example- think in candidates and political parties in new democracies, and what do we expect from them and what do we get. Maybe is this why so many older generations develop that sort of nostalgia for the years of Franco, the Mexican PRI or the PCUS?
Here his TED Talk about how more choices make us less happy. He couldn't conclude any other way: "the secret to happiness is low expectations".
Labels: ciencia política, democracy
Reflections about Development Aid
0 Comments Posted by Alex Guerrero on Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 10:11 AM.
"Philanthropy can appeal to people who want to be loved more than they want to make a difference", writes Jacqueline Novogratz , after many years wandering through Africa, continent where she arrived as a naive aid-idealist. And after facing during decades the limits, contradictions and corruption plaguing development aid, evolved to an aid-realist - at least avoiding to become another aid-cynical.
Novogratz also says many other interesting truths:
"It is so often the people who know the greatest suffering--the poor and most vulnerable--who are the most resilient, the ones able to derive happiness and shared joy from the simplest pleasures", and continues in a pessimistic tone, "That same resilience, however, can manifest itself in passivity, fatalism, a resignation to the difficulties of life that allows injustice and inequity to strengthen and grow..."
Aid agencies and organizations are frequently more doing experiments -and failing- than being effective. Add that there is no accountability for their actions, and the flux of knowledge between them is overrun by competition and egos. Said that, things may and should change in the way they operate... or they should disappear. Critical is how knowledge is shared and managed. For this reason, I am pretty optimistic with this new initiative from the social entrepreneurs of Ashoka, in order to solve the chronic ineffectiveness of development aid: in Changemakers.com they collectively look at social problems and discuss and propose actions to solve it, one problem at a time. This is a good start, coming from below.
Novogratz also says many other interesting truths:
"It is so often the people who know the greatest suffering--the poor and most vulnerable--who are the most resilient, the ones able to derive happiness and shared joy from the simplest pleasures", and continues in a pessimistic tone, "That same resilience, however, can manifest itself in passivity, fatalism, a resignation to the difficulties of life that allows injustice and inequity to strengthen and grow..."
Aid agencies and organizations are frequently more doing experiments -and failing- than being effective. Add that there is no accountability for their actions, and the flux of knowledge between them is overrun by competition and egos. Said that, things may and should change in the way they operate... or they should disappear. Critical is how knowledge is shared and managed. For this reason, I am pretty optimistic with this new initiative from the social entrepreneurs of Ashoka, in order to solve the chronic ineffectiveness of development aid: in Changemakers.com they collectively look at social problems and discuss and propose actions to solve it, one problem at a time. This is a good start, coming from below.
Labels: development
Uruguay: Anatomy of a Beautiful Reform
1 Comments Posted by Alex Guerrero on Tuesday, May 19, 2009 at 1:12 PM.
For more than a century and a half, Partido Colorado and Partido Nacional ruled Uruguay. But with the victory of Tabare Vazquez in the 2005 presidential elections, the left party Broad Front took office with a long-pending redistributive agenda.
One of the first priorities of the new cabinet was to introduce a fairer tax reform. In Uruguay, as it is usually the case of small nations, equality is a highly ranked social value. And it is also highly correlated with satisfaction with democracy across the region. Even if Uruguay's poverty line and inequality levels (0,45) are the lowest in Latin America, the long corporatist tradition of the country, tweaked by the liberalization in trade and capital unleashed in the 1990s, emphasized an unfair distribution of the tax burden, coming mainly from [formal] workers' shoulders and poor households' pockets.
Same tax burden, but a more equitable burden distribution
Tabare's government wanted to increase vertical and horizontal equality of the tax system, and to do so he had to reduce consumption taxes -which affects mainly to the poor- and increase the weight and progressiveness of income taxes.
The reform revealed the scheme of winners and losers: businessmen protested, and the most negatively affected groups demonstrated, mainly medical doctors, lawyers and other very well-paid liberal professionals. But again, a sense that equality was a social value to be pursued in Uruguay mitigated their resistance, adding to the countermeasures of this tax reform: a general improvement in the quality of government-provided services, especially universal healthcare.
Beautifully done, Tabare.
One of the first priorities of the new cabinet was to introduce a fairer tax reform. In Uruguay, as it is usually the case of small nations, equality is a highly ranked social value. And it is also highly correlated with satisfaction with democracy across the region. Even if Uruguay's poverty line and inequality levels (0,45) are the lowest in Latin America, the long corporatist tradition of the country, tweaked by the liberalization in trade and capital unleashed in the 1990s, emphasized an unfair distribution of the tax burden, coming mainly from [formal] workers' shoulders and poor households' pockets.
Same tax burden, but a more equitable burden distribution
Tabare's government wanted to increase vertical and horizontal equality of the tax system, and to do so he had to reduce consumption taxes -which affects mainly to the poor- and increase the weight and progressiveness of income taxes.
- Income tax levels became more progressive and went up for the richest, especially the 10% richest, who saw a 150% increase compared to the previous system:
- Consumption taxes went down for everybody, especially the poorest, who consume most or all their income:
- The tax burden became fairer, more efficient, less economically disturbing, and more Western European. Inequality post-tax and poverty levels dropped a little bit, but the whole system provided future governments with the right tools to raise more revenues if they are willing to expand further social policies. At the end of the day, equality is mainly achieved through social expenditure, not taxation --but you need to have the money first:
The reform revealed the scheme of winners and losers: businessmen protested, and the most negatively affected groups demonstrated, mainly medical doctors, lawyers and other very well-paid liberal professionals. But again, a sense that equality was a social value to be pursued in Uruguay mitigated their resistance, adding to the countermeasures of this tax reform: a general improvement in the quality of government-provided services, especially universal healthcare.
Beautifully done, Tabare.
Labels: democracy, development
An interesting excerpt:"Shame is the social emotion because it is the psychological force underpinning both conformity and obedience to authority. On the pressure to conform, we can look to Asch's (1952) experiments, in which each person around the table was asked to say which of two lines projected on a screen was the same lenght as a third. All except one of the people were stooges in cahoots with the expermienter and had agreed to give the wrong answer. The point of the experiment was to see what the one naive experimental subject would say when it came to his or her turn to say which of the two lines was equal to the third --after everyone else had expressed the same (false) opinion. After these experiments had been repeated a number of times with a succession of subjects, it was found that a large proportion of people tended to conform to the group opinion rather than give an answer which set them apart from others. When asked afterward to explain the answers they had given, people said they feared looking stupid, or thought others would think they "couldn't see straight." But interestingly, some of the people who conformed most appeared to be quite unaware that they had responded to any kind of group pressure" [1]
[1] Wilkinson, R. (2005) 'The impact of inequality: how to make sick societies healthier'
Spain’s Economy shrinks at a 7.2% annual rate until March 2009. Here an excerpt:
But still, the idea of being above 20% unemployment for such a long period of time is frightening.
Here is the complete country-briefing. It's plainly scary, even if in my opinion this analysis is misrepresenting the strong interdependency of Spain and the other European economies: as soon as the European demand will recover, factories making pieces integrated in continental supply lines (i.e. cars, planes, appliances) will restart production in Spain and tourists will flow in again.Despite some recent positive development (decrease in interest rates and prices, fiscal stimulus measures, slight improvement in confidence, ECB purchase of cédulas hipotecarias…), Spain will not recover even as other economies begin to breathe again. The worst year undoubtedly could be 2011, and the unemployment rate by that stage could reach anywhere between 25% and 30% of the labour force if you accept the March 17.5% number as good.
Bottom line, a complete nightmare, with the only bright spot being imminent control of the political system being assumed in Brussels and Frankfurt, since along with the economy the political “automatic stabiliser” system also seems to be broken.
But still, the idea of being above 20% unemployment for such a long period of time is frightening.
Labels: españa
In Brazil, because people pay very high taxes when buying stuff -indirect taxes- and income taxation is so low and barely progressive, a very poor family will pay 33% of their total income in taxes, meanwhile the super rich will have to pay just 23%.
In Brazil, income inequality has historically been among the highest in the world, despite some modest improvements under Lula.
In Brazil, several attempts to reform this crazy tax system since 1995 have repeatedly failed to be enacted. In every attempt, party discipline evaporated and some members of the Parliament switched to the other side of the aisle just before the vote, or there were "sudden" corruption scandals in the media discrediting the reformist government of the time.
Write your own conspiracy theory down here...
Labels: Brazil, development
Aqui otra vez... Una puerta de embarque, un empleado de Airtrain hablando rapido acerca del orden de acceso al avion, esta vez a Miami. Se supone que viajo alli a ver a mi buen amigo Galo, a aprovechar mis ultimos dias de vacaciones... Pero especialmente a celebrar de manera inusual mi 30 aniversario. Miami, playas, sol, amigos.. suena bien. Se supone, en el mindset yankee, que debes de hacer algo espectacular...
Pasan veteranos de la II Guerra Mundial, muy ancianos, y la gente aplaude. Otra americanada. Me pregunto si esos hombres tuvieron opcion de no ir a la guerra, aunque fuera justa, cuando fueron jovenes. Si pudieron escoger defender la patria de otra forma. Si los que no regresaron merecen un doble aplauso...
Siempre crei que la edad concede mayor experiencia, pero al borde de los 30 sigo cometiendo las mismas tonterias, tal vez mas: la edad da temeridad. Sigo confiando en cosas tan naives como que los buenos sentimientos, desnudos, siempre abren la puerta al alma de los demas.. que estupida presuncion.
Casi llegado a los 30, me doy cuenta de cuan seguro he estado siempre de que era lo correcto, y de que, sin embargo, esos mapas para pilotar la existencia, aprendidos y copiados en la adolescencia y despues, sirven realmente de poco para sobrevivir al mundo real, mucho mas duro de lo que nos anticiparon. Ya no estoy seguro de nada, y menos de mi mismo. Va a ser toda una aventura redescubrirlo todo en los proximos anhos.
'Entrando en pista', anuncia el piloto...
De momento, yo he vuelto a llenar el suelo de una habitacion de suenos rotos... otra vez...
Que torpe...
Pasan veteranos de la II Guerra Mundial, muy ancianos, y la gente aplaude. Otra americanada. Me pregunto si esos hombres tuvieron opcion de no ir a la guerra, aunque fuera justa, cuando fueron jovenes. Si pudieron escoger defender la patria de otra forma. Si los que no regresaron merecen un doble aplauso...
Siempre crei que la edad concede mayor experiencia, pero al borde de los 30 sigo cometiendo las mismas tonterias, tal vez mas: la edad da temeridad. Sigo confiando en cosas tan naives como que los buenos sentimientos, desnudos, siempre abren la puerta al alma de los demas.. que estupida presuncion.
Casi llegado a los 30, me doy cuenta de cuan seguro he estado siempre de que era lo correcto, y de que, sin embargo, esos mapas para pilotar la existencia, aprendidos y copiados en la adolescencia y despues, sirven realmente de poco para sobrevivir al mundo real, mucho mas duro de lo que nos anticiparon. Ya no estoy seguro de nada, y menos de mi mismo. Va a ser toda una aventura redescubrirlo todo en los proximos anhos.
'Entrando en pista', anuncia el piloto...
De momento, yo he vuelto a llenar el suelo de una habitacion de suenos rotos... otra vez...
Que torpe...
Epilogue... After a Trip to the Tropics
0 Comments Posted by Alex Guerrero on Friday, March 27, 2009 at 12:14 PM.
All the human hopes condensed in a hundred faces. Maybe all men got one big soul everybody's a part of; all faces are the same man. The smartest person I have ever met said once to me that "life is better measure by experiences -and friends- than by time", and I could say that it has been the case this month. I barely remember the distant day when I left Washington, bringing lots of hope and anxiety as my luggage. Four weeks later, I just can say that there is another world, and I have been there. The emotional implication with the people of these two small countries has been far more intense than anything I could experience in my last three years in the US. I know that. I guess that dreams, like anguish, bring people together. And suffering equals everybody. How did we lose all the good that was given us? Let it slip away. Scattered careless... But I learned a few things in my time here:
Be Empathic: I come back convinced about that indisputable truth. That we are nothing if we only care about ourselves, self-focused and just developing a earthly shrine dedicated to our ego. Popularity, professional success, beauty, all those things are meaningless temporary achievements that nobody will care about in few years. Wrong fights. Et in Arcadia ego... We really are not ourselves until we don't come in touch, empathically, with the world we live in.
Care about Democracy: I also bring along a dozen of doubts and "research questions" around our basic idea of Democracy. Political Science still desperately needs to come back to the fundamentals and redefine the concept. Robert Dahl, a pope in Political Science and a good old Yale professor, was always very sad because of our constant struggle to just agree about this basic definition. But the fact is that when we come to places like Honduras and El Salvador, and we observe the workings of their political systems, formally a democracy, one misses so many pieces that would funnel representation from the citizens to the government, that it's hard to accept this sort of liberal democracy in the general definition. Politicians struggle to survive in power here, in a constant fight between elites, but just for the sake of gaining the grace of the economically powerful establishment. Nonetheless, you would note that either Europe or the US are not so different. Only, from time to time, as it was the case of El Salvador this month, a powerful grass-roots movement allied with economic turbulences can break the pattern and bring some hope. Even if it remains to be seen how long-lasting this change in the rules of the game is going to be until the new elite is co-opted. But in a regular democracy, real alternation should be the rule and not the exception. Those who do not see the dangers in a democracy with a very unbalanced representation are just blind. Even Machiavelli would acknowledge that. The Prince should not just exert fear, but also love, in his fellow subjects, and he has to avoid the monopolistic rule of any special group. The Prince, in our present time, is us, the voters, the People.
Worry about Development: My optimism and pessimism about Development and development professionals grew in parallel in this trip. I still observe, and suffer, what I call the "bureaucracies of development", those international and national agencies blahbling the development jargon we are used to and caring, mainly, about procedures. Becoming the Kafkian nightmares they were not meant to be, due to the high expectations all we put on them. But the hope is that a myriad, million-strong army of community organizers, teachers, healthcare trainers, Jesuits!, volunteers and especially, that [still] small elite of development professionals -hey, Pax!- who want to transform the way this work is performed to a more complete, jargon-free, human-based, multi-disciplinary and efficient discipline. They just can succeed at some point.
Hunt Friends: Someone said that when you gain a friend, you find a treasure. There is something magical in connecting with another person, enjoying his/her conversation, sense of humor, views of the world, and stories from the past. It's like two trains running at the same speed and coming from different tracks, and at some magical point those tracks become parallel pathways and both trains have time to spend together in their trip. Friends come and go this way, but many of them, those who shared that deep connection with us, inexorably become a share of our memories and soul. And said that, traveling alone is a great way to meet people and make some random, few good friends. There is something exotic in being a foreigner which other people find enticing, and they are naturally open to conversation. One day, I remember, I was in the balcony of a café in Jewel Key looking at the sea, and this old woman, Shannon, came next to me. We started talking about how would life look like in this narrow, overpopulated key, and five minutes later I was telling her my deepest existential anxieties and dreams, my life cross-roads and tough choices. And, fifteen minutes later we were sharing a table for lunch and sharing a drink. Is it not magical?
I came here with lots of questions and I found some few, but enriching answers. First, one should move his steps towards the future not basing his decisions on fear, but on pursuing the things that enlighten you and make you happy. Also, you are never alone if you decide not to be. Loneliness is a personal choice, afterall. Somehow, it is the refusal to open your self to the other. And many people, even if constantly accompanied, are indeed very alone in this world. And the last and most important one, Flor de Caña is still the best rum in the Caribbean. Period. No discussion about that.
- AMOR OMNIA VINCIT -
Be Empathic: I come back convinced about that indisputable truth. That we are nothing if we only care about ourselves, self-focused and just developing a earthly shrine dedicated to our ego. Popularity, professional success, beauty, all those things are meaningless temporary achievements that nobody will care about in few years. Wrong fights. Et in Arcadia ego... We really are not ourselves until we don't come in touch, empathically, with the world we live in.
Care about Democracy: I also bring along a dozen of doubts and "research questions" around our basic idea of Democracy. Political Science still desperately needs to come back to the fundamentals and redefine the concept. Robert Dahl, a pope in Political Science and a good old Yale professor, was always very sad because of our constant struggle to just agree about this basic definition. But the fact is that when we come to places like Honduras and El Salvador, and we observe the workings of their political systems, formally a democracy, one misses so many pieces that would funnel representation from the citizens to the government, that it's hard to accept this sort of liberal democracy in the general definition. Politicians struggle to survive in power here, in a constant fight between elites, but just for the sake of gaining the grace of the economically powerful establishment. Nonetheless, you would note that either Europe or the US are not so different. Only, from time to time, as it was the case of El Salvador this month, a powerful grass-roots movement allied with economic turbulences can break the pattern and bring some hope. Even if it remains to be seen how long-lasting this change in the rules of the game is going to be until the new elite is co-opted. But in a regular democracy, real alternation should be the rule and not the exception. Those who do not see the dangers in a democracy with a very unbalanced representation are just blind. Even Machiavelli would acknowledge that. The Prince should not just exert fear, but also love, in his fellow subjects, and he has to avoid the monopolistic rule of any special group. The Prince, in our present time, is us, the voters, the People.
Worry about Development: My optimism and pessimism about Development and development professionals grew in parallel in this trip. I still observe, and suffer, what I call the "bureaucracies of development", those international and national agencies blahbling the development jargon we are used to and caring, mainly, about procedures. Becoming the Kafkian nightmares they were not meant to be, due to the high expectations all we put on them. But the hope is that a myriad, million-strong army of community organizers, teachers, healthcare trainers, Jesuits!, volunteers and especially, that [still] small elite of development professionals -hey, Pax!- who want to transform the way this work is performed to a more complete, jargon-free, human-based, multi-disciplinary and efficient discipline. They just can succeed at some point.
Hunt Friends: Someone said that when you gain a friend, you find a treasure. There is something magical in connecting with another person, enjoying his/her conversation, sense of humor, views of the world, and stories from the past. It's like two trains running at the same speed and coming from different tracks, and at some magical point those tracks become parallel pathways and both trains have time to spend together in their trip. Friends come and go this way, but many of them, those who shared that deep connection with us, inexorably become a share of our memories and soul. And said that, traveling alone is a great way to meet people and make some random, few good friends. There is something exotic in being a foreigner which other people find enticing, and they are naturally open to conversation. One day, I remember, I was in the balcony of a café in Jewel Key looking at the sea, and this old woman, Shannon, came next to me. We started talking about how would life look like in this narrow, overpopulated key, and five minutes later I was telling her my deepest existential anxieties and dreams, my life cross-roads and tough choices. And, fifteen minutes later we were sharing a table for lunch and sharing a drink. Is it not magical?
I came here with lots of questions and I found some few, but enriching answers. First, one should move his steps towards the future not basing his decisions on fear, but on pursuing the things that enlighten you and make you happy. Also, you are never alone if you decide not to be. Loneliness is a personal choice, afterall. Somehow, it is the refusal to open your self to the other. And many people, even if constantly accompanied, are indeed very alone in this world. And the last and most important one, Flor de Caña is still the best rum in the Caribbean. Period. No discussion about that.
- AMOR OMNIA VINCIT -
Labels: honduras, salvador, Verdades Como Templos, viajes
