Friday, September 28, 2007

People worth more than things.

I'm very diffident about my English in this one...

Do you know when you find a true statement that you immediately incorporate it to your cosmovision? Is that magical moment when you see a perfect delimitation of an idea that, although never had been in touch with you in that way, is so familiar? That happened to me last year, when my Applied Communication teacher, designed the phrase more simple of the world, but containing the most pragmatic truth that my social intelligence will never forget. “People worth more than things”.

If you allow me to advance in this thought, I would like to amplify that concept to: “Life is more important than things”. We define, therefore, “things” as everything that don’t live at all. I know, for half dozen persons reading this may look obvious what I am saying till here, but I say to this minority, believe me, there are a majority that don’t understand so easily this simple truth.

It’s easy, in the world today, that people follow in love for things. And for that they cross values out, passing through what really mattes in life. People. In fact, there is a super-valorization of the person when this happens, but the wrong person. This person put it’s own desires above external values. When someone steals, kills, commit adultery (in all senses, sexual, social and economic), cheat, betray, pass through other interests, hurt, brake laws, ill-treat animals and etc… What is really happening is the super-valorization of it self. What, for consequence put things, the desired objects of an individual, above people. Above true values of life. We become what we most want, therefore even more humans will look like things, and not living beings. Things don’t relate, they make use, take advantage or serve each other. They are impersonal and inflexible in the fulfillment of their functions.

Impact of this modern thought, people die for profit

Someone can be asking, “but why relate is more important?” Last week I watched a philosopher in TV say one of the most few phrases in television that marked my life: “The family is the only institution capable to generate life”. It’s clear now? Just relationships generate life. What’s the meaning and relevancy of Pluto to the rest of Universe? None. But if there was life there? Then, it would be one of the most important planets in Via Lactea as the Earth. The life, for more miscomprehended that have been is what we know of most valuable. Even those who already gaved up of life and don’t give to it the proper value anymore, do this for the love of it.

Backing to the subject, we understand that, the world is more materialist today for lack of altruism. In another words, the excess of selfishness consumes us, cause human’s relationships are substituted by relations between people and things. Objects and living beings. Desires and realizations of a single individual. The man relates more with him self and less with the rest of the world. The Ipods are one pragmatic prove of that. The more time is passed with a thing the less time is passed with a living being and more time is passed alone.

That’s not so far guarantying the survival of mankind, but of the individual species. The human’s relations shall always exist, but they have even less meaning, they are helping the individual in his personal agenda to achieve his desires. The more this phenomenon happens and expands, more things get highly valuable over life. Less peace we’ll have, more divisions, more economic dysfunctions, less happiness, more stress, more rush, more capitalism, less solidarity e etc…

I was talking to a friend about CO2 guns, he told me that he loved to kill birds from far. So I said that I don’t shoot birds, but I like to shoot in glass and objects that react beautifully to my shots. He immediately understood my veiled critic and said: “So, you don’t shoot birds, but you shoot in someone’s else goods?” I understood that he had interpreted the word “glass” as a reference to my neighbor’s “window” (this is very common into Brazilian Portuguese semantic) or car’s windows targeted. Automatically, I fixed his mistake and explained that I was referring to glasses that I owned and stored for this activity…Wait a second!!! Let’s rewind a little...

Have you noticed that my friend putted someone’s goods above the life of a bird? Maybe if you had not realized it, don’t you think is time to reconsider? So glasses from windows and goods have more value than an animal that “is”, live and feel individually? This animal have social responsibilities with the lives it generated and relates with others members of it’s own species. That’s the reason why it worth less then a piece of glass that costs 2USD? Makes no sense.

Lotuho's village, also known as Latuka people.

“For traditional Africans, keep the balance and harmony in relationships inside his own family and tribe is extremely important. The possession of material goods is much less important than keep the appropriate interaction with other people. To the occidental man, in another hand, the value of people tend to be measured by the quantity of it’s possessions – land, money and goods. One result is the seek for success that means long hours in work, and disposal to annihilate other workers, friends and even family to be able to achieve great profit.

The Lotuho people, from south Suddan, for some time rejected the use of cattle to pull the plow, even knowing that the use of this animals would raise their production of food. With the cattle, the great feasts that happened during the field preparation for the sowing, would not be necessary, and that feasts were crucial to keep the relations in society. Better have less food, they say, than risc the harmony inside the village” (Applied Comunication class notes 2006, teacher Valdecir Lima).

If it’s not clear yet:
In life what really matters are not things, but relationships.

Without this comprehension and the legitimacy of our relations, we’ll be mere individuals alone in a multitude of abandoned. In the day that career, job, opportunities for your personal life, profit, desired objects and things in general become more important in your life than people, then it’s time to revaluate your values. For whom had we lived for? To fulfill the sheet in the duty of living? To realize ourselves at the cost of everything and all? This behavior in practice is what defines who you are. Are you a person or a thing? People relate.

Monday, September 17, 2007

The Death of Hope II – Man is not the solution?


This last week You Tube published the World Premiere of “How Far We’ve Come” song, from Matchbox Twenty. It does not matter if you like the sound of it (I loved) but the lyrics are really deep. It talks about the same subject that we were talking before. The end of hope to makind. It does not matter either if we are talking about apocalypse, nuclear wars or the Global Warming issue, the same entropic behavior is well noticed for everybody.

Pay attention to the lyrics, they recognize the lonely situation of the postmodern and nihilist man (that may not have someone to say goodbye) and the images in the background. You’ll see great conquests of mankind and also an allusion to our failures. Then in the final chorus we see in the background the universal symbol of joy and commemoration: Fireworks. But they are in antagonism to the words in the mouth of the Group. In another words, we are “pretending” to be glorious, but “Let’s see how far we’ve come”…

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Hero’s decadence – The end of Hope

I’ve noticed and irritated alot with the way how the heroes have been pictured at present. The reborn of heroes in cinema and TV series is just an illusion. They are dying. In all the last movies launched about heroes, just one thing was common to all. The postmodern and hopeless thought. All heroes today are less heroes, more humans (even the ones from out of Earth), filled with faults and existential crisis.

I don’t know if you remember, but the hero objective always was inspire integrity, morality, values and hope that someone would save us from ourselves. Although, the heroes now are more like one of us. Not so full of rectitude anymore, see for example the new Superman movie. He uses his powers to spy and violate Louis Lane privacy, he’s ex-wife, now merried with another man. If wasn’t enough, he immorally seduce and put her in a betrayal situation against her present husband. Yet in this movie, the 5 (I think) years old son of Superman, kills a man. All right, you can say that he deserved that, but so what? Since when a 5 years old child has the power to judge who lives and who dies? And if he did it by accident, where is the responsibility of the ones who hold the power? Where is this safety filling that heroes gave to us, protecting us from the ones who irresponsibly uses power?

Think in any present movie, from X-Men to TMNT, from Rocky VI to Rambo 4, all heroes had some kind of existential crisis in witch their powers were a way too higher weight in their mission to save the world. Why our new histories are like this? Cause we want to turn this histories real or cause we are, each time, more hopeless about everything? Looks like the second law of thermodynamics is reaching our thought, ideas and creations. As we can see in the Nickelback song, called Hero, where the composer affirms don’t wait for a savior anymore:

“And they say that a hero can save us. Im not gonna stand here and wait… Someone told me love will ALL save us. But how can that be? Look what love gave us.
A world full of killing, and blood-spilling That world never came”.

As long as we continue to look to our bellybutton we’ll just find faults and disappointment. Super Heroes don’t exist, but I don’t know how good is this believe, in the absence of external hope, to us? Are we tired to wait, or are we looking to wrong place all this time? And if there is salvation outside our superficial reality? And If?... Science don’t have an answer to that, Religion claims to have it. How much of this issue have you researched? How good is to a convicted to know that there is no one out there for him? I know, this hopeless situation does not prove anything, but shows that we need hope. Not a fake one, we reject that, but a real one. Do you think this exist? I believe.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

Martin Luther King Jr.