to be Freeee

I'm a free rider

2011-11-02T00:56:00.000+09:00

Free riders from birth

I'm a free rider. I've been riding for free all my life. Not that I really had a choice, it was the only possibility given to me...

I grew up in a house above the average in my country. I had access to a TV, a washing machine, a refrigerator... I had access to a VCR before many of my friends, and later on to a video camera, and eventually a computer, and then a PlayStation. Well, should I mention I also had a nice bed, couch, carpeted floors, and a clean house - cleaned by a maid, who happened not to be a free rider like me, she didn't have free access to half the things I had.

From the moment I was born, I've been riding freely on everything my parents have built and possessed. I didn't do anything specifically to deserve it besides being born in the right household at the right time.

More important than all the shiny things, I had access to a nice education. I went to good schools, and since I didn't need to worry about what to eat tomorrow or how to support the house in case my parents got sick for a week or two, I had enough time to relax and focus on my studies. My education is more important than all the material things my parents gave me access to because it gave me the ability to get myself more material things by myself. Education gave me an alternative to free riding on my parents.

Intuitively, free riding is not fair. Receiving things without doing anything to deserve them is not something to be proud of. But I'm not ashamed of it either, I didn't do it on purpose. But the fact is that there are so many, but so many people out there who weren't given the chance to free ride from birth like I did. They had to struggle from the day they were born and were never given the opportunities I had. While I was comfortably learning how to stand on my own, they were too busy crawling to stay alive.

What is not so intuitive, or even understandable to me, is how do some free riders from birth like me have the face to call these other people, who haven't got much to ride on, potential "free riders". Whenever they ask for opportunities, for shiny things, since they don't have much to give back, free riders from birth look down on them and say they don't deserve it. One needs to deserve what they get, to give back, apparently. Well I'm not really sure how that works, these people who haven't been given the same head start are expected to catch up with us brats in some miraculous way with ten times the effort and ten times less opportunities. For me, that's plain unfair, an abuse.

People call this system fair. For me, it isn't fair from the start. From birth. Capitalism is a kind of monarchy, with its property rights and inheritances. Some are born with privileges, others aren't, and the whole thing is conveniently placed in the hands of the original free riders, who don't acknowledge the randomness of their own position and require worthiness from all others. This system is unfair in its core, primitive, with its bloodlines and lineages. Those seeking justice have to look away from it, for a system of equality, opportunities and cooperation - since birth.

I'm hungry

2011-10-17T06:42:00.000+09:00

I'm hungry.

I could quickly go to a restaurant, or order some food...

But... I can't easily know how the food was prepared... Maybe they used those low quality frying pans which release toxic black thingies into the food, maybe they didn't wash well the plates...
I also don't really know what kind of ingredients were used, or where they come from... Low fat milk or fatty milk? Sugar or sweetener? Fresh vegetables or those frozen ones?

Well, I could always cook myself...

But... At the supermarket... Where did the veggies come from, a town nearby or have they traveled half the world using up fossil fuels to reach me? How were they grown, were pesticides used, maybe there was some child labor involved...?
What about the meat, has it come from industrial farming where the animals are genetically modified to produce more meat than their legs can carry and live on darkness walking on poo and corpses?

I'm hungry!

Maybe I should go to a farmer's market I know. But it's quite far and expensive, I've been there already this week, I can't afford to go there every time.

I'm getting hungrier.

There's a family owned restaurant nearby which I trust. They serve huge portions though, I can't eat it all alone and there would be left-overs, and I don't want to throw food away. Maybe bring a doggy bag home...?

I'm hungry, and it seems like this is not gonna change until I either ignore my principles and values or dedicate my whole life to food.

Health, the environment, worker's conditions, animal rights, even distribution... Is the food in my plate respecting all these the way I'd like it to? I have no clue! Confusion, guilt, frustration, anger... All these feelings ruin one of my favorite activities - eating.

I don't want to dedicate my life to food, but I plan to make it a bigger part of my life. I've been cooking more often, I try to buy local ingredients and waste the least I can. My dream is to have a house someday where I can have my own system like the one on the video below, growing my own veggies efficiently. And hopefully, one day I'll live in a city with one of the vertical farms like in the second video... Then one day I'll have my belly full of food and my mind free of guilt.

Soil-less sky farming: rooftop hydroponics on NYC restaurant

Vertical farming

Consumer under consumption

2011-01-17T23:05:00.004+09:00

Initiatives disregarding consumers in favor of other people
become a threat to consumption

Consumers are those who consume. Consume something until the end. Consumers are extremely popular, everybody talks about them. The consumer chooses, the consumer demands, the consumer votes with his dollar, the consumer has to be pleased.

Consumers are, of course, people. One kind of people, the kind which consumes. Other kinds of people are not as popular as the consumer kind. Non-consumers don't choose, don't demand, don't vote with dollars and are not pleased.

Products which are made with consumers in mind are consumable, even when they aren't. A seed was genetically modified for consumers by Monsanto, for example. The consumer buys the seeds, plants them and harvests the crop. The crop produces new seeds, but the consumer wants to see consumption. So Monsanto protects the consumer's interests by including in the patent that the new seeds cannot be used; they are there, but we can pretend the whole original product has been consumed. The consumer's position is guaranteed and he can buy new seeds from Monsanto to consume. Even if the product itself is not consumable, legal systems are put in place to assure the consumer's position is intact.

The music industry also loves consumers. It provides songs for them to consume, and they are protected from sharing, so their friends can be consumers as well. Record labels think about their consumers' friends' need to consume. The same goes for the movie industry, blocking disks to artificially make naturally non-consumable products, consumable. The publishing industry loves consumers so much that they are making digital books which self-destruct, doing the consuming for the consumer, so the consumer can relax and be sure the product will be consumed. These industries are developing technologies with the consumer's best interests in mind.

Digital files and seeds are very similar, they are easily replicable and not really consumed, but consumers can be sure that there are industries working hard to satisfy their need to consume, using both technology and legal systems to ensure the product will be consumed. Companies are not only developing useful things, they are also putting a lot of effort on making products more consumable. To please the consumer.

The world is not a perfect place however, and the consumer now finds his position to be threatened. Recent trends in products and services are going as far as to ignore their dollars and thirst for consumption. These trends are greatly influenced by the advent of the internet. While traditional industries like the ones above still struggle to please consumers, more and more initiatives are showing up with complete disregard for them. Wikipedia for example is under the creative commons license to make sure its material won't be consumed, self-destruct or become inaccessible to someone by law. Wikipedia is not for the consumer, it is for his nemesis, the non-consumer.

As if the virtual world wasn't enough, the trend is spreading to the physical world as well. One particular target are the consumers who enjoy hotels and hostels. They are being attacked as people all around the world offer their couches for free on CouchSurfing.org. Consumable disposable combs, tooth-brushes, and those little shampoos which consumers love are faced with the non-consuming new threat of sharing. Beyond couches, there are numerous other online initiatives focused on passing things from one person to another and avoiding consumption.

Consumer, beware, for the zeitgeist is changing in such a fast pace that the world might reach the point of no return for consumption. The paradigm is shifting so smoothly that consumers might not feel the danger they are facing. Take the RepRap project for example, which has the objective of making a 3D printer which can print a copy of itself someday. In one of his presentations, the professor which started the project calmly said that there's no point on selling a self-replicating machine, because you'd only sell one and it would replicate from then on. See what's happening, he didn't think of consumers even for a second, no struggling to use technology to control the spread of self-replicating machines, no struggling to use legal systems to force consumption. This is the world we are in nowadays, where the consumer is not even slightly thought of. Companies like Monsanto, which use legal tricks to overcome the self-replicable nature of their products and help the consumer consume, have new competition.

Capitalism, the ideology of consumers, is at risk. One of the main pillars of capitalism, competition, is backfiring and slowly taking the capital out of capitalism. It is clear that the consumer is endangered, and now is the time for him and the industries which represent their interests to take an attitude before it's too late. The more society advances the more attention other kinds of people get and consumers are left behind holding their useless dollars, displeased. Technology, which has been developed exclusively for consumers for the longest time, is now betraying them.

Consumers, tell me, how do you feel now that the world is moving towards this complete disregard for consumers and their desire to consume? Are you starting to feel like your dollars can't vote? Are you displeased? Do you feel like your own identity is at stake? Do you think the world's movement towards a non-consuming future is inevitable? Do you think the path the world is taking is unethical for not taking your consuming needs into consideration? Do you fear all the peace and understanding which might come along a world which values cooperation over greed and consumption? Do you find the open-source movement to be a threat to society? Are you sad that the environment might be preserved if products are made to last, be reused, upgraded and not consumed? Do you feel tempted to joining the non-consuming?

My image of the USA

2010-10-09T15:12:00.004+09:00

Cool, modern, and yet... so primitive.

When I was little, the USA were synonym to coolness and modernity: everything we should aspire to. All the cool stuff like movies, video games, music, the latest technology, fast food, came form there. Anything sounded better in English. The dream of every kid around was to go to Disneyland. I guess anyone from Latin America can relate to what I'm saying, since we all are flooded with anything and everything from the US, which makes us feel like we are good for nothing. In fact, "abroad" meant the USA. Europe, Asia, Africa? Sure, we hear about them in history and geography classes. But the cool thing right then, the land of Hollywood, McDonald's, Michael Jackson, Friends and Microsoft, was the USA!

As I grew up, I started getting bothered by the US, but it had nothing to do with the country itself. The other Brazilian people kissing their ass was what I had a problem with. It seemed common sense that Brasil sucked and the US rocked. People were dying to escape to the States, to leave the mess in Brasil and start a new life in a place conveniently portrayed by the media as infinitely superior. That pissed me off. My fellow Brazilians were all cowards trying to take the easy way out, running away from the problem instead of helping to solve it, and making everything worse in the process. I still had the cool Hollywood image of the US, but I started disliking them for taking people's hearts away from Brasil.

My annoyance with the US continued being just a matter of my Brazilian patriotism for a long time. Some little things would add to it here and there, like the fact that people over there refer to themselves as Americans, even though America is a whole continent and I'm as American as a Japanese is Asian. My Hollywood image was also starting to break down slowly: they are the most obese nation in the world?! What other points about reality in the US were the movies lying about?

My next shock was, funny enough, not due to a fake reality depicted in movies, but the exact opposite: a common movie theme which I thought nowadays only existed on the screen turned out to be a sad reality, wars. Up to that point, wars, for me, had always been historical facts. You know, the kind of thing human beings used to do before they learned proper ways of discussing issues and coming to agreements. Brasil hasn't been in wars during my lifetime, so the word "war" reminded me of world wars, ancient tribes and stuff. That's why when I learned that there were wars happening right then, and that the States were fighting in them, my futuristic image of them was totally broken. I mean, the future is not about people beating each other up until one gives up, every kid learns that getting physical is not a solution. The US love talking about freedom and yet brainwash their young men to kill other human beings who happened to be born somewhere else? The methods used by the modern nation were pretty ancient to my taste. And childish, like a big fat bully.

The final blow to any image of technology, innovation and modernity there could be left to me vanished when a friend from the US told me that "Religion is pretty big in America, George Bush says he was sent by God." I was appalled, I couldn't believe it, how medieval! I knew Bush had a reputation for being kind of dumb, but sent from God was a whole new level! So besides sending people to war, their head of state mixed religion and politics?! Like a pharaoh!? I was in shock, nothing made sense anymore. They have "In God we Trust" printed on their money, Bibles in court rooms! They are actually struggling to let go of creationism! The media had done a great job illustrating the country as a place of reason and intelligence, when in reality they hadn't even been introduced to secularism yet!

I spent a long time angry at the US for pretending to be so cool and making Brazilian people dislike their own country, while they seemed to be behind us in so many areas. I couldn't find anything else superior about them besides the fact they had more money and were very cunning when portraying themselves. The more I dug the more dirt I found, and not obscure stuff, the dirt was pretty mainstream. The war thing was worse than I thought, half their taxes going to the military, university professors always slipping in some military application for their research in order to get funding. And seriously, Fox News! I thought Rede Globo in Brasil was non-objective and reported things according to their interests, but Fox is just too brazenly obvious!

I guess the US are in fact, let's say, more advanced in several areas. And sadly enough, our poorer countries have been actually working hard to follow their example on everything without taking a deeper look first. Like the Ugandan people who are being influenced by evangelical priests from the US into condemning gay people to death. The US did a great job tricking the third world into believing they are a model of modernity which we all should aspire to. But we are growing out of it and seeing the country for what it is. A big political mess like any of our countries. A big example of unsustainable irresponsible development. A nation with a still big religious influence in daily life, education, and politics. A superficial country that praises unhealthily thin bodies while a big part of its population suffers from illnesses related to excessive food. A country which high-jacked the word freedom for their own capitalist interests, and self-righteously shove their sick idea of freedom into other countries when, clearly, they are rotten inside themselves.

Right now, I've passed the hate phase. For me the US is just another country, an abstract concept conveniently abused by smartly evil people. Their people, proudly receiving troops returning from Iraq, are no better to me than Osama Bin-Laden's peeps partying after the September 11th attacks. I feel sorry for their soldiers as I feel sorry for suicide bombers, sorry for their megachurches as I'm sorry for the black meteor in Mecca. Tourism-wise, I'm not very interested, it wouldn't feel exotic. Career-wise, the military funding thing disgusts me. And honestly, the idea of a rancher trying to shoot me and my girlfriend thinking we are sinful Mexicans is not pleasing.

But one never knows, right? Specially when you are free, anything could happen. I could end up in the "heart of the free world" eventually... hahahaha Peace and French fries!

The religious are the kinkiest!

2010-07-24T15:29:00.003+09:00

The "defenders of morality" are not the best example to follow...

Kinkiness is a completely subjective concept with no absolute meaning in nature. Depending on your culture and on your own experiences, your idea of what sexual positions are less conventional will certainly be different. Therefore, taking out forced intercourse and pedophilia, it's impossible to determine the "wrongness" of a sexual act without appealing to subjectivity. This lack of objectivity in arguments is proof that it is no one's business to be dictating what kind of sex other people should be having. The gender of their partners, the number of people involved, the body parts used, the extra props... None is inherently right or wrong and no one is being harmed by other people's choices, and so, other people's sex lives are not up for anyone to approve of or not.
So just to point out the obvious, I won't be judging anyone's sexual practices here. There's no right or wrong, just different ways of having sex depending on people's personal preferences. Unlike me, however, there's a group of people who love to spend their energy trying to dictate what others can and cannot do in the privacy of their lives - super-religious people!

Religious people think so high of themselves that they feel in the right to require others to have sex with who they approve of, in the positions they approve of, and under conditions determined by them (such as marriage). They have their own classification of what sexual acts are right or wrong, and the most extremists are not willing to be flexible about mere details.

That's a very interesting fact, actually, because in my purely subjective personal opinion and under my own standard of kinkiness, super-religious people are the kinkiest!

My own standard of kinkiness varies with how uncommon some sexual act is or appears to be. The more common, the less kinky, because if everyone is doing it, there's nothing special about it right? So by this definition, the good old penis-in-vagina is the least kinky sex anyone could have. My parents had it, my grandparents had it, the quiet housewife with 6 kids had it, the queen of England had it! In Brasil we even refer to it as "daddy-and-mommy", that can't be naughty at all. This is the purest sexual act I can think of, it is responsible for keeping our species in this world. There can be nothing inherently bad about it. So for me, anything else is kinkier, because it requires a little deviation from the norm. Can you tell if your grandmother has ever masturbated? Or given a blowjob? Actually I wouldn't want to know... But inevitably I know for a fact she had a penis inside her vagina at some point...

Handjobs, anal sex, blowjobs, cunnilingus, masturbation, ass licking, S&M, orgies, you name it! As I see it, they all require a little audacity to do something not everyone might be doing, an extra desire from within which characterizes each person's personal preferences - and therefore they are unconventional, kinky.

Super-religious people, however, like to place many sexual acts on the extreme wrong. "Man on man? Wrong! Vaginal penetration before marriage? Wrong! Masturbation? Wrong!" But interestingly, many of these people who are so quick to yell wrong also allow themselves to have a sort of gray area of don't-ask-don't-tell, or don't-tell-don't-go-to-hell. "Anal? Well as long as the hymen is intact and the girl can present herself as pure to her future husband... Oral? Hum just make sure not to spill the seed?" I was surprised to learn about how many religious girls are doing these things while still showing an image of perfect purity. For some of them this is just a game of society, what matters is what you show in your wedding night. But after hearing many stories, I got the feeling that many of them do think these actions are not so bad under the eyes of their respective gods. Before getting married and performing the purest act two bodies can do together, they are doing all the kinky stuff and still sure they are going to their heavens. And still condemn others...

I have nothing against their sexual choices, really, but I think that sitting on a big cock is not exactly a position to dictate other people's sex lives from. Perhaps you could take that dick out of your mouth so I could hear you better?...... (Sounds dirty right?)

I do have to make a point here in order to be fair. I know many religious people who are not kinky at all. The same way, I know many non-religious people who are equally not kinky. The conclusion we get from that is that religion is no definitive measure to determine who is kinky. No matter the religion, race, or culture; there will always be the horny ones and the not-so-interested ones. And independently of the rules enforced, the horny ones will always find ways and justifications to be kinky, for society and for themselves.

I was appalled the first time I heard about religious guys and girls doing oral and anal with the excuse that this inherently less wrong than doing daddy-and-mommy before marriage. Not because I thought the acts were bad, but because I couldn't believe the hypocrisy of people who are constantly condemning personal sexual choices "because they don't make babies" while they themselves are using their bodies for pure selfish pleasure in slightly different ways.

Religious people not only claim absolute rightness when it comes to sexual affairs, they also claim to be the most loving ones. Yet, they are quick to condemn others. Isn't it ironic that me, the non-religious, is not condemning anyone for doing what makes them feel good? Think about it, from whatever your position is.

World-Cup Patriotism

2010-06-13T20:43:00.038+09:00

No teams in real life

The World Cup is here, and Brasil lives one more quadrennial brief season of widespread patriotism. During these precious two months, Brazilians change their usual displeased attitude towards their motherland into a very special football-nationalism. Might seem like an exaggeration but it's true, most Brazilians are only proud of being Brazilians during the World Cup. But I was different. I used to be a full-time patriot.

Among all the ideologies I've been exposed to throughout my life, no other had me like patriotism did. Unlike other Brazilians, I didn't dream about living a glamorous life in Europe or a Hollywood life in the US. I used to dream about making my country better. After all, what's the fun in receiving a country ready? I wanted to be able to enjoy something I helped to build.

Unfortunately, it's needless to say that very few shared my ideas about what's fun and fulfilling in life. Most of the others were opportunist hypocrites world-cup-Brazilians, who in my view (at that time) should be cheering for some lame European country or for a certain nation where football is played with hands.

I guess my main reasons for being a patriot were quite noble. You know, not running away from problems, trying hard to make things better... But sadly, I finally noticed that patriotism also brings some undignified characteristics with it. You see, loving your country and trying to help it so much means that there's a limit to how much you can appreciate other pieces of land. Patriotism, like football, inevitably carries the divisive idea of "us and them", which can be fun if we are talking about sports, but it's not so honorable when it comes to real life, and ends up bringing more problems than solutions for everyone.

I came to realize that it's not very noble to care exclusively about other people who happened to be born inside the same imaginary lines as I did. I also figured out that as an individual I'm not really connected to the institutions which were built centuries before I was born on that land. So what, if I had happened to be born in Japan, would I be spared of moral obligations towards poor kids in favelas because that's a problem for institutions from the other side of the world? The same way, being a Brazilian, should I only care about favela kids and assume it's someone else's obligation to care for African kids? Or maybe have those kids' happiness as a secondary goal? It's not like that, morality is universal and independent of borders. The right thing to do does not end up at a border line.

It took me a while to put all these ideas in order and realize patriotism was not as just as I grew up believing, and that in fact, it stands in the way of real freedom, justice, equality and solutions, by separating us when we should be uniting to make society better for all. We're all members of the same species living on the same pale blue dot in the middle of a vast universe, and we are more dependent on each other than we've ever been. We gotta step back and look at the big picture in order to find big solutions which include us all. My dreams are not to make Brasil better anymore, now I aim for the whole world.

There will always be people who grew up watching the same TV shows, telling the same jokes and cheering for the same football team as you, and there will always be people who you can have lots of fun with even though they came from the other side of the world. When it comes to the things which really matter in life, nationality doesn't say much about who you are or what you should be doing. As for the superficial just-for-fun things, well, I'm glad I'm Brazilian and there are 11 men who I've never met or have anything in common with wearing a yellow shirt and kicking some ass in my name! So go go go Brasil-sil-silllll! mwahahaha

Mi casa no es su Rome

2010-05-23T21:16:00.001+09:00

When in Rome... Mi casa su casa?

I guess we all would like to live in a world which is fair and everyone is given a chance to find happiness, right? And in this increasingly globalized world, this means we have to find ways to live in peace with people from different backgrounds and cultures. Having that in mind, I'd like to look at two common approaches to cultural diplomacy.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. This is a very common approach and we can see evidence for it everywhere. The president of the US bows to the emperor of Japan, the Pope visits a mosque when in Jordan. Doing as Romans do shows you come in peace, and is one of the first steps towards establishing good relations. I consider this to be a very nice approach, from the point of view of the non-Romans, the guests. But from the point of view of the Romans themselves, the hosts, that's a totally different story, and I don't quite agree with acting as a Roman.

What I mean by this is that Romans shouldn't be expecting everyone who comes from outside to do as they do. If they are really interested in peace and understanding, that is. When we are the ones receiving a guest, the peaceful approach is "mi casa su casa": make yourself comfortable, my home is your home, my Rome is your Rome. That's because when talking about world peace, an intolerant host is as bad as an intolerant visitor.

I might be wrong, but I think mi casa is not as widespread an approach as the Roman approach. We quickly defend Saudi Arabia forbidding "infidels" from entering Mecca, but we also feel in the right to defend our country forbidding Muslim girls to wear the burqa. We are very good at doing as the Romans do, but I dare to say we only do so in order to require our visitors to do as we do when in our casa. Call me wrong, but I don't think this is a very understanding and peaceful position. For me, the honest peaceful attitude is that of tolerance, whether in mi casa or su Rome.

Catholicism Paganism!

2010-05-13T00:01:00.005+09:00

You really gotta rethink your idea of "devil"...

One funny thing about religions is how they see each other. You know, with that condescending feeling that deep inside, we are the right ones and they are wrong (well at least not as wrong as those dumb atheists!). But even funnier is how the three monotheistic religions consider followers of any other religion as "pagans", basically a pejorative term meaning pre-historic barbarians who perform crazy rituals and sacrifices, and worship things which are more of the devil than of god. Yeah, that's very funny, specially when talking about the largest religious denomination in the world, catholicism.

I was raised a catholic, and I was ok with it all in the very beginning, I was a kid after all. A kid being told she had to go certain places and do certain things because these are the good things to do. But as I grew up, it all slowly started looking very creepy to me. Not only the fact that most people in church were old and all the furniture seemed to have come from the dark ages, there was something else, something which just didn't feel right. And that's when I realized that catholicism is bloody! And that's so creepy!

Churches are full of images of bleeding people, starting with Jesus of course. There, nailed to a cross with blood dripping from all around: his hands, the crown of thorns and the multiple sores all over his body. What a creepy image to show a kid! The worse is that the kid does not have the discernment to realize how horrible it is until later. The kid is told that churches are places of peace and goodness, but seriously? A place full of bloody images is where we can find good and morals?

My church had pictures with the "14 Stations of the Cross" all around it, which represent the path of Jesus on his way to crucifixion. A path of blood, as Roman soldiers hit him harder and splash the red liquid around. And as if worshiping images of torture weren't enough, the highlight of the mess is when people eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus! Man, seriously? Looking at pictures of a bleeding guy as you imagine to drink his blood? How barbarian!

And the, hum should I say, paganism, doesn't end at the church. It's common for catholics to have images of saints in their homes as well. As for my home, my parents are big fans of Saint Sebastian, so we've always had a statue at home pretty similar to the picture above, full of blood coming out of his arrow wounds. Also, as I've had eyesight problems since little, my mother used to tell me to pray to Saint Lucy, the patron-saint of the blind and those with eye-trouble. And we had at home a statue pretty similar to this picture. Man, look at that! The poor girl is carrying her own eyes on a tray! Is that supposed to make a kid feel better?

That's the biggest religion in the world for you, and they go further than raping little boys. They are these terrifying barbarians who worship bleeding mutilated images and fantasize about eating their flesh and drinking their blood once a week. Add to this the Bible, which is probably one of the most sanguinary books in history, with genocides and torture, and by following this religion you get what? Peace and goodness and morals? Oh seriously, you are really pushing it!

Not everyone needs to contribute

2010-05-05T22:05:00.002+09:00

Capitalism is to reward what eye-for-an-eye is to punishment.

Oh capitalism! Isn't it the fairest social system we've ever known? Everyone gets what they deserve. It's based on a very simple idea: you have to give in order to receive. Simple. When it comes to life in society, in order to receive all the benefits of living in it, you have to give your contribution to it as well. Do your part. This, I guess, follows from the assumption that society requires the contributions from each and every one of its people in order to function properly for all. But does it, really?

The benefits of life in society are countless. It offers the advantage of the "divide and conquer" strategy. Each one contributes a little, and the summation is very good for all. But is it really necessary for every single person to contribute so we all can enjoy a nice society? Not necessarily. Why would it necessarily be so?

Not everyone needs to contribute to society for it to work nicely and pleasantly for everyone. As long as not too many people stay on the way of others who are doing positive contributions, society can work. With only a few positive contributors and many neutral people not contributing for better or worse - just enjoying it. Of course some negative "contributors" will come up, but as long as the overall balance stays positive, things work for the best.

Society is definitely too complex for me to explain what I'm trying to say, so let's look at something simpler first. Like an encyclopedia for example. Got where I'm going? Wikipedia! Wikipedia is the encyclopedia which anyone can edit. Some make great contributions without expecting any rewards, while most people only enjoy the benefits and don't help at all. Of course there are trolls trying to screw things up now and then, but as long as the overall participation stays positive, Wikipedia is a success. Not everyone who uses it has the obligation to contribute, and it still works pretty well for everyone.

Now, thinking about society, really, there's no logical argument saying it is necessary for everyone to contribute in order to get things done for everyone. Things can work smoothly for everyone even if there are free-riders, just like with Wikipedia. Of course it's more complicated, but not at all impossible, and that's what we should be understanding at this point in history. It's just a matter of finding the right technology, and that's what we should be looking for. We should be looking towards a world where those who want to contribute are given the tools, and those who don't wanna help still can enjoy it.

And that's very feasible. We all know how far open-source software has come, and now more and more music, books, and creative work in general is showing up in the public domain. People are doing things for free, because they've been given the tools. And this is moving beyond virtual things as we enter the era of open-source hardware as well. It is already happening.

And all these new possibilities pose us a very important question for the first time in history. If we have conditions for some people to provide benefits for all people, is it ok to do otherwise? Wouldn't it be wrong, immoral, not to do exactly that?

Capitalism, in it's core, completely ignores the fact that not everyone needs to contribute. It's just not necessary. Capitalism forces every single arrangement to be an exchange. But with new technological capabilities, we are realizing this is not the only possibility. We are capable of so much more, and it seems that sticking to this old idea of fair exchange is almost immoral. Even in its most uncorrupted form, capitalism is to reward what eye-for-an-eye is to punishment.

Thankfully we are finally growing out of that and looking for better alternatives. In fact, the need for better alternatives gets more evident the more we advance technologically. We are starting to realize that some ideas which come from the capitalist mindset are just too bizarre at this point in history. Ideas like "machines are bad for taking away jobs". What a wicked mindset is to believe people should be doing mechanical tasks in a factory in order to prove they deserve the benefits of society. This just doesn't make sense anymore.

But the change in paradigm is coming. People are sharing for free. And those who want to stick to the old model... they end up being the negative trolls which are holding us back. Capitalist ideals are stalling the initiative of helping others without expecting money in return. So much potential going to waste because some people refuse to move forward. Real improvement for everyone will come as more people start realizing that capitalism belongs to another era.And the paradigm will be shifted once and for all.

That's the world I look forward to. A world where those who want to share, share; those who don't want to do anything, don't have to do something just to prove they deserve the benefits. And the trolls... Well, they can try to erase a Wikipedia article, but it will come back on in minutes ;)

A letter to my Muslim friends (on cartoons and Muhammad)

2010-04-22T20:06:00.006+09:00

You have the power to stop it.

Have you heard about the recent problem involving South Park and Islam? After an episode was aired this week showing the prophet Muhammad in disguise, the producers of the show received death threats from radical Muslims. This kind of angry reaction towards cartoons of Muhammad is not new, I guess everyone still remembers what happened to Denmark embassies all around the Muslim world after some cartoons were published on a newspaper.

My Muslim friends, you are all great, virtuous, peaceful people - and I like you all very much for that. Unfortunately, your religion happens to also include the most extremist of fanatics in the world, and I know this is as sad to you as to everyone else. That's an unfortunate reality and a problem that has to be dealt with. And I agree with the conclusion of the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West that you guys, the peaceful Muslim community, has a bigger influence on making this madness stop than the rest of us do.

You, the more reasonable Muslims, have to take a lead into solving this. And in relation to cartoons, the easiest you can do is to depict Muhammad in some cartoons yourselves. I'm not asking you to make fun of your prophet, just any drawing of him should do. If the majority of Muslims, which is peaceful, do it, the radicals will have one less excuse to continue this endless "war against the west". Such an easy and simple act of the Muslim community might save a lot of trouble for everyone.

The international community is starting to get worried about radical Islam, and this only makes your life more difficult, as many people make no distinction between you and them. So show the world you are in fact reasonable, peaceful and tolerant. The same way you don't follow Sura 3:151 "We shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve", you can be reasonable about cartoons as well.

Think about it :)
Sincerely,
Chapu

Money requires violence

2010-04-11T11:24:00.001+09:00

A few questions to capitalists regarding morals.

Money is a mean of exchange among people. It has no absolute meaning in relation to the resources it is exchanged for. You pay another person to give you food, a piece of land, an idea, etc. A person receives the money. And the price to be paid is determined by the person. No connection to the thing itself. Resources themselves don't have a monetary value. We made those up. So how come we have to pay money to obtain basic necessities of life? Water, in nature, has no price tag. Someone stands in front of the fountain charging the price they came up with. Why are we paying? Because if we don't, violence will be used against us.

Money requires violence. And all the "properties" which come along it as well. Physical property, intellectual property... These are only property-ed through the use of violence.

So for the capitalists and defenders of the monetary system out there, I have a question. How moral is a system which is based on violence? A system which rewards and protects those who hijack natural resources for their own profit, those who put a price on people, allows them no other means to acquire basic necessities of life and calls them work force - all through the threat and use of violence? Can capitalism be moral, ethical? Even if regulated... Can capitalism not require violence?

Because if it can't, I think capitalists should stop pretending to be anything more than immoral barbarians. And don't come and blame it on human nature! I am no barbarian, and there are millions of people in this world like me. People who don't mind fairly sharing resources and ideas. People who are not looking for an artificial incentive based on violence. Moral people.

Unexpectedly Environmental

2010-03-23T14:13:00.003+09:00

Environmental concerns are not only for the privileged anymore, and we have the privilege to understand that now.

Some old friends in Brasil got surprised to hear me talking about protecting the environment. "You've never cared about these things", they said, as they went on making fun of their mandatory environmental classes. With intrigued eyes, they told me I was becoming "one of those annoying environmentalists."

It's true that I'd never given as much importance to the environment before as I do now. Of course I knew pollution, deforestation, etc, are bad, but I had other priorities in mind back then.

I remember that on my first year at university in Japan, I joined a seminar about solving poverty in the world. There, some of the other concerned students asked me to also join the environmental seminar. Funny to think about it now, but at that time I politely said no, while in my head I was wondering how could people think about saving trees while there were human beings in serious difficulties worldwide. At that moment, I thought to myself that the Japanese students didn't know how difficult life was out there. Dying trees, dying people - from wealthy Japanese eyes it was just a matter of choosing a cause to your taste, I thought.

But for me it was evident: people come first, and the environment was just a secondary objective, for those who have the privilege of having nothing else to worry about.

I've always loved nature. I've been hiking and climbing mountains for years now, I enjoy camping, swimming in the ocean, etc. Still, back then, dedicating your life to the environmental cause seemed like something only "tree huggers" would do. People who have an aversion to modern city life and would rather live in the forest with squirrels. And that was not me. I love nature, but I'm a city girl. I loved the convenience of city life, and still do, so what has changed?

Do I not care about hunger, injustice, human rights, wars anymore? I certainly do care! But do I still think environmental problems are too little near those ones? Not anymore. Living far from my comfort zone for 4 years has given me a new perspective, and now I can see beyond what's directly in front of my eyes. Now I can see what wasn't clear before: everything eventually goes down to our Earth, from the food we eat to the iPods we buy. Might seem obvious, but it wasn't for me, and it has changed everything.

I think a good way of visualizing this is by asking yourself "Is it a good idea to send all our trash to space in order to eliminate pollution?" I used to be one of those people who say "yes, as long as we have enough money to do so," and I know many educated people who still think this way. But once you take a look at a wider picture, you realize that if we just consume all of the resources our planet has and throw it all away, we will eventually be left with nothing in a dry poor land which cannot sustain life anymore.

I believe that anyone who defends practices which disturb our environment does not understand the implications of living on a limited planet, the way I didn't (or simply doesn't care enough). The Earth is not infinite. The Earth is basically a closed system when it comes down to the resources necessary for life, so we got to find ways of giving back everything we take, and in perfect conditions, or we will go extinct at some point not too far away. Now that sounds like a priority to me.

Our population and wasteful lifestyle are exponentially growing. No wonder it's too difficult for us to grasp the dangerous consequences of that, it's just too much too fast. But we have to start seeing this planet as the little ball of renewable resources for life it is, and protect its ability to continue hosting us. It is one small rock in the middle of the universe, with billions of tiny people living on it. By understanding that we are all together on this one, not only the environment will be protected, but also every human life depending on it. And maybe there will be fewer reasons for war, as we realize we are all one.

On Sacrificing Convenience for the Environment?! I talked about how we don't need to give away our conveniences in order to protect our planet, we just need creativity.

Priorities for Life:

Politics is Big Brother Brasil

2010-03-12T23:20:00.001+09:00

Brazilians' fixation with Big Brother reflects their way of dealing with politics.

The hottest topic right now in Brasil is BBB, short of Big Brother Brasil. Rich and poor, educated and uneducated: everyone has some idea of what's happening with the 17 strangers locked up in a house. And everyone has something to say about it. Some restrain to superficial
comments about which participant seems more friendly, while others have informed opinions on who's who in the house and the complicated dynamics among the participants. Funny enough, this seems to be the same approach Brazilian people have towards politics.

No one can follow every detail of 17 people's lives for 24 hours a day, it's humanly impossible. That's why most people depend on the daily or weekly summaries aired at night to keep track of what's happening in the BBB house. If someone is really interested, they can even buy the pay per view channels, but they won't be able to watch all the cameras all the time. Maybe they can try focusing on something, maybe a few participants, or maybe on what they eat, on who's sleeping with who. But no one spectator can really know completely everything that's happening, ever.

Isn't this how we deal with politics? We form our opinions based on the chewed up bits delivered by the media, just to have what to say in a conversation. Those who are really concerned focus on some aspect of it and research it throughly. But no one really gets all the details, there are too many variables involved, many of which are not accessible to most of us. And really understanding what's going on is fundamental in deciding who to vote for. Which brings me to the second parallel between BBB and politics...

The illusion of true participation, the feeling that you can make your opinion count. After all, every week you can vote on who you'd like to stay in the game. However, in both games, we're not free to vote on anyone we want. We gotta choose between a few candidates who were put there by forces which are out of our reach. Well well, still, we feel like we are truly part of the show, don't we?

No one can keep track of what is happening in politics, and the little we know has been delivered to us after a filtering by people with their own interests. And while we try to grasp what's going on in order to have an educated opinion about things, we don't realize that
we live inside a reality governed by factors above us. We are locked up in our country, our job, our family, our religion, our TV shows, our schools, our bars, our kiosks, our beaches, our cars, our friends, our games... And while most of us are just trying to enjoy the ride, others are making an effort to play dirty.

For Brazilian people, politics are not more than something to talk about over some beers. Because we all got a living to make, and can't dedicate much of our time to these reality shows...

I'm a potential criminal, check out my panties!

2010-03-09T23:46:00.003+09:00

No pride is allowed into the United States of America.

Following the success of United Breaks Guitars, I felt like producing "United Wets your Luggage" as I got to Brasil last month. My beautiful bag which had got intact to the US all the way from Japan under the care of ANA, had been completely mistreated by United Airlines on the way to Brasil. Wet and stained, so sad... Just not as sad as what happened on my way back to Japan!

It's relatively more complicated to check in going to the US from Brasil than when going from Japan. Even before immigration, the airlines have a security check, where I resisted the urge of replying to "What were you doing in Egypt a year ago?" with "Learning how to plant bombs to destroy the occidental free world". I resisted, I didn't want trouble, I just wanted him to return my passport. That's why I was very nice when I asked the United employee if he could do something to keep my bag from getting wet this time. After all, it was my fault for traveling with a pretty bag, and expecting to have dry clothes once I got to Japan.

He didn't want to help and just told me "these things happen". Then I saw that the person in the next check in counter had managed to cover their backpack with a plastic bag. After a long time asking for it, they finally got me one as well. I didn't feel like I was asking too much, but the guy felt like he deserved a medal.

In the US, even though the luggage was checked in all the way to Japan, every passenger has to take their luggage from a treadmill and put it on the next one. I guess that for security reasons they want to keep a record of who is taking each bag with their super spy cams. So I patiently carried my 18kg bag, still covered by the plastic, which means I couldn't roll it. It's amazing how I managed to be calm the whole time, but never again. Now I know I should have given their cameras the middle finger, because TSA (USA Transportation Security Administration) was about to do the most humiliating thing to my suitcase, which I was to discover only once in Japan.

As the plane landed, still on board I was paged to meet some personnel in land to talk about my bag. I had no idea what was going on. The Japanese people were polite as always, saying a thousand sorries and ready to help me with anything, I just didn't know what kind of help I would need, what had happened to my bag? They told me to go take it from the treadmill and come back to talk to them.

At first I didn't recognize it, but after another round around the treadmill I saw that my things were not inside my suitcase anymore. Everything had been taken out and put in a bigger plastic bag, which included my emptied suitcase. My underwear was mixed with my food and books. I had bought this huge thing of ground garlic which was really smelly, so I had packed it into 2 plastic bags - but now the bags had been teared open and everything smelled like garlic. The books were not organized into one bag anymore, everything was a mess. I'd had more than 30 hours without sleep, I just wanted to get home, I didn't wanna talk or understand what was happening.

I just put everything back into my bag, totally unorganizedly, and went to talk to the ANA people. They were trying to explain to me that the bag was opened in the US for a security check and that's how they had left my things. I said I didn't think anything was missing and left - what else could I say? "The US government went through my panties and now everything smells like garlic!" My suitcase had been raped: teared open, abused and left helpless. They gave me a number to call in case I had any further complaints, and I proceeded without saying anything else.

I just wanted to get out of the airport, but first I had to go through the Japanese customs. I had a crying face, and the man must have thought this was a sign of hidden duty to pay. He asked me to open the bag. Ah open the bag! I told him to do it himself, and he did it. Looked through my messy stuff, well, it wasn't a secret to any government anymore - I had brought clothes and ground garlic! You caught me! Then he couldn't close the bag anymore and told me to do it. I stayed there staring at him as he tried and the line got longer. I just wanted to leave, so I ended up closing it myself.

What a humiliating episode. I wonder how often this happens to innocent travelers around the world. Decent people treated like criminals, like their privacy and belongings don't deserve any respect. I was probably stripped naked by their new scanners, then my luggage teared open and spit back to me. Because I was Brazilian, or maybe because my bag was inside a plastic, or maybe because their temperature sensors felt I was too hot even for someone coming from Brasil during summer, maybe because I had wanted to see the pyramids a year ago. Who knows the reason?! And the funny thing is, I probably don't even have the legal right to know the reason. Why me? Why all this lack of respect? I'll probably never know...

But who am I, besides a potential criminal? Besides a poor girl who got stuck with the cheapest ticket she could get back home, which unfortunately included a 12 hour layover in the most paranoid, disrespectful, and unfortunately, powerful country in the world. Who am I to want some respect? In this planet, money rules. Money buys you first class seats, money buys you private jets, money gives you the right to invade people's luggage, see them naked, invade their lives... And without money, you gotta put your head down and say sorry for being a potential criminal.

What a great society we've got here, really. We fought so much for democracy, for human rights, for better governments, for more laws! And we've forgot about self-respect somewhere on the way... Does anyone know how can I get that back?

Problem Solving Class

2010-02-15T21:34:00.000+09:00

Problem solving is different from imposing your own priorities on others.

Let the class begin...

Ok, last week I asked you guys to design for me the audience seats of a movie theater in an optimized way. I didn't tell you what to optimize, of course, because I don't know how far optimization can go. No one does. There were millions of possibilities, so I set you guys completely free to show me your real potential and will to solve problems. I got some amazing works, and also some very shitty ones. Let's start by the work of Mr. Bloh. Who is he? Oh ok... So Mr. Bloh presented his work with very nice graphics. Which program did you use to do this? Oh impressive. Very well done for such a short time, I can see you gave yourself to the task. Just let me ask you a question. What are these for? Oh for the arms... You thought of a comfortable position and all? Nice... Just tell me one thing, this person sits here very comfortably, and what about the one who sits here? They have to fight to see who puts their arm there? Oh, you didn't think about it...? Well it's ok, I was just wondering... So next we have...

Oh what Mr. Bloh? You fixed the problem? Already?! With that computer over there? Wow! So fast? Are you sure? Do you want to show it to the class? Ok... Oh so you put one for each person so they don't have to fight over it. Ok... Are you sure you want to submit it like this? Oh you look confident! So you can't or don't want to think a little bit more about this? No? Ok Mr. Bloh, so tell me one thing, how many people fit in the movie theater now? 200? And how many did before? 300? So you kicked out one third of the people in order to put extra hand thingies which many people won't use anyway? You put an extra distance between anyone on a date, or someone who just wants to comment about the movie with the friend by their side... And you call that problem solving???

What? We got to make sacrifices sometimes? So you come up with the answer a 3 year old could have thought of, the most obvious answer to the immediate problem I gave you, forgetting completely about any other factors, and you call yourself a problem solver? Problem solving is not about making sacrifices. If you got to sacrifice something, obviously, the problem was not solved. Presenting an idea full of collateral effects is not solving. Many times it might actually be the source of a new problem which no one had never even thought of. In your effort to give everyone's arms a rest, you slowed down the life of the 100 people left outside, and of the boy who was planning to kiss his date for the first time during a romantic scene.

What? You can't always have it all? Nothing is perfect?! Are you here to solve a problem or to force your priorities on people? To tell them what they have to sacrifice? Mr. Bloh, you are very talented with that computer over there. Your abilities are impressive, but I got to tell you that you are very weak on your ideas. Seeing how little thought you gave to the big picture, and how satisfied you got with your shortcut to solve a sub-problem, I'd advise you to stick to the drawing and leave the imagination for someone else. If you are not willing to start right now fixing your defensive attitude, and the way you hang on to your own ideas, I don't think this class can do much for you. You will never be part of the solution, and will constantly be part of the problem.

And this message is for all of you. Don't fool yourself if you are thinking Mr. Bloh is much worse than you. The truth is that at least 90% of you came to this class with the exactly same self-righteous attitude. Every year an unfortunate student is unlucky enough to be the one I pick on after the first task. This was Mr. Bloh's year. But the truth is that almost each one of you comes here with this close-minded attitude, and I can see it in your work. Each one picked a specific problem to solve, and committed a lot of sacrifices on the way. The world is full of people like this, and that's not solving our problems. In fact, looking at the big picture one finds out that the sacrifices have become the norm, and everyone is ok with them, while the so-called problem solvers of our society keep on pushing their priorities on everyone else.

How to solve problems? Well, the first thing you have to understand is that no one is going to solve a problem alone. No single human being is able to see the big picture. The president knows the solution? The CEO, the Pope? If none of you, talented graduate students, was capable of making a perfect movie theater, how is it that we even consider the idea of a person knowing what's best for millions of people?

Well, if alone you can't, maybe in a group? Maybe if all 30 of you put together the best point of each one's idea and made one single movie theater. Maybe then you would reach perfection? I'm going to let you try, just for educational purposes, but I'll tell you in advance that there will be unsatisfied people at the end. Definitely. Happens every year. The class gets together, takes forever to reach a consensus, and when we present the final project to the public, problems and more problems start to come up. Nevertheless, every new class takes it as a challenge to be the first one to please every single client. And every year I see the confident smiles fade away as the customers point out their particular unsatisfaction. It's discouraging, right? But believe me when I say that it's awful for me too. Your failure is my failure. Who am I to solve the problem solving thing on the first place? So I'll make it clear since now that I'm not going to turn any of you into problem solvers. I simply can't.

No one has ever reached perfection, but believe me, class after class, the projects get better and better. And there are many reasons for that... The ever faster advancements of technology, for example, allow us to every time offer something which wasn't possible before. The grow of the internet and easiness of communication is also allowing us to be more aware of the big picture. Advancements in our moral codes, and the slow replacement of old dogmas is also opening our eyes for what really matters. We are starting to understand the need for interdisciplinary cooperation in order to form an ever growing picture, to understand that all our problems are related to the same thing: people on Earth. All problems are related to human beings, we created problems on Earth, and we are the spoiled ones who want more. And all the tools we can count on to solve these problems are all here in nature. We have to learn how to optimize things withing this context, without sacrifices.

Class dismissed =)

Priorities in Order

2010-01-27T12:08:00.004+09:00

To learn how to work within our real limitations, we need to see the bigger picture.

At the end of The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard reminds us that the materials economy we live in, which is responsible for careless pollution and social inequality, is not an unchangeable law of nature, such as gravity, but a system created by human beings like you and me. Extraction, production, distribution, consumption, disposal. Nature had never done this before we appeared on this planet. And it's not to say that nature's way of doing things is worse. In fact, nature already does most things we are trying to do - and much more elegantly. The main difference is that nature has its priorities in order and knows its limitations, while we don't.

On a talk about the fast-growing field of study called Biomimicry, which searches for inspiration in nature in order to develop sustainable and efficient technological solutions, Janine Benyus talks about how we can learn from nature's priorities. To illustrate that, she takes a sea shell as an example. While we've been melting metal at high temperatures and then using a lot of power to cut them, generating a lot of waste in the process, sea shells easily self-assemble from sea water and turn out stronger than ceramic. Animals can't afford to heat metal to high temperatures inside their bodies, and still, they found a way to create strong shells. Nature knows its limitations, and even working within these limits, its achievements are so fascinating that they put our top engineering to shame.

Granted, it's not fair to compare human creations to solutions nature took billions of years to develop through a slow process of trial and error. We don't have that much time. However, we happen to have unprecedented reasoning abilities to help us through this. Our brains are probably the most incredible things to ever come up from nature. Unfortunately, of course, just being complex and incredible is not enough. On this planet, species and populations which don't know their limitations and priorities, go extinct. That's a natural fact that has happened over and over again, and we are no exception to the rule. Species which take more than their environment can give are eventually left with nothing to take. It's about time we start putting our priorities in order, no?

We need to start focusing on the search for real solutions, like those of nature. Solutions which are cyclical, taking as much as returning, thus generating no impact on our environment and our people. Solutions which take the big picture into account, not just the little world immediately in front of our eyes - because the big picture does affect all of us. If a certain solution is not sustainable, has collateral effects or generates irreversible damage, that's not a real solution - that's just a dirty band-aid. "The best we can come up with at the moment, just to hold until someone thinks of something better..." Band-aids are, of course, better than no solution at all, but they do come with a warning: Do not get too comfortable!

Look for example at materials economy, the one exposed at The Story of Stuff. Nothing more than a band-aid poorly holding on until something better, more just, sustainable and efficient comes up. Nevertheless, we've got too comfortable with it. The same way as engineering is still mainly concerned with cutting metal, our economy is stubbornly focused on adjusting the capitalist band-aid. Moving it a bit here and there, developing stronger glue for the parts which don't stick anymore. It's sad to see how many well intended people can't see past that, as if it was part of nature, and set their priorities based on this fallacy. They forget about the real limitations of our planet, and take the market limitations as the rule.

Throughout history, band-aids have been branching into many categories, and each category has become so complicated into itself that none is able to see the big picture anymore. Not a few centuries ago, scholars could master philosophy, biology, physics, politics, medicine, chemistry, etc. all at once. Even though they had relatively less information, at least they could see a bigger picture. But no one can afford to do that nowadays. The economist acts on the assumption of scarce resources, while the biologist knows that to the CO2 we call pollution, nature calls building blocks. Engineers crack their heads to make more efficient pumps, while biologists know that trees bigger than buildings bring water to their top without a pump. We cannot see the big picture, and each one of us is getting too comfortable with our own band-aids, to the point of believing they are as natural as gravity and forgetting about what's really important. That's dangerous, and is destroying our world. How to adjust our priorities in exponential times?

We need to get back in sinc with nature, put our priorities back in order. We should constantly ask ourselves what is part of nature and what is man-made. And what I consider the most important, we should never get too comfortable with band-aid solutions, or deep inside our field of study. We should always try to see the bigger picture. Taking a posture of "oh well, this specific point can't be helped" is simply giving up. Giving up, of course, is ok; not everyone is into saving the world. But if you gave up, don't expect me to believe you when you say you are trying. I know that finding real solutions will not be easy, I never said it would. I'm just saying we shouldn't give up.

Just to finish, let me tell you about how I'm trying to keep my priorities in order. Recently I've had the luck to run into the RepRap project. In a few words, a RepRap is a 3D printer which one day will allow you to print yourself a new phone, computer, or anything you want, right on your desktop. When you don't want your things anymore, you bury them in your backyard and from the crop which will be fed by it, you have more material to build new things. Sounds like an awesome solution, giving people the things they want, giving them autonomy, and taking as much as giving back to Earth. I want to help with the RepRap project! But not everyone does, other people have other priorities... You can notice that for example, by the amount of investment RepRap research has been getting - not so much. In this materials economy, wealth is concentrated with an elite which has their own set of priorities, and these don't include giving everyone "wealth without money" as RepRap promises. That's just an example - don't give up!

Are your priorities in order?

I mentioned various sources in this post, which you may or may not be familiar with. I tried to make myself as clear as possible in the shortest space I could. If you are interested, I suggest you watch The Story of Stuff, the Biomimicry talk, and an introduction to RepRap. Also, the video below is a nice introduction to what I was trying to say; taken from the Zeitgeist Movement Orientation video.

Practical and Spiritual

2010-01-14T11:42:00.003+09:00

Shedding light into the old religious debate.

I found out something new about myself this week. Well, it's not a big surprise or anything, I just had one of those moments when a light bulb blinks above your head... I found out I'm very practical. I'm the kind of person that would cook lunch and not wash the pot if I knew I'd have a similar dinner later. And I guess this is how I deal with almost everything. I try to be logical, efficient, straight forward. My actions usually have a point, even if the point is simply "to get happy". And since I'm like that, my automatic way of perceiving the world is to project this practicality onto others when trying to make sense of what they do. Well, now that I've realized this is just my perception, I can look at things from a new angle.

This simple thing sheds light into another topic: religiosity. I'm constantly wondering why some people really hang on to religion, because for me it's so easy to understand that religion was man-made, and even if God happened to exist, he's not anywhere to be seen. And a God who doesn't affect the world is as good as no God - for every practical purpose. But that's the thing. If you take out those who are religious only because they were born into it, never were taught how to think critically, or are afraid to get out for the imposed guilt, most of the real religious people are not in it for the practicality.

This must be difficult for some atheists to understand. From most of the arguments I hear from atheists trying to make sense of religious beliefs, I feel many atheists lean to the practical side like me. They tend to assume religious people are in it for the comfort, or because they got somehow lost in the search for truth and ended up in the wrong end of things. Atheists often argue against religion pointing out inconsistencies, logical flaws... Of course, this might reach to the not so religious people. But my guess right now is that the real superstitious people are not so practical about things. They don't want the facts, evidence, or things that actually work; they are looking for something beyond, something spiritual.

Duh, that's obvious!

But not as much as I might have thought. Their way of seeing the world is so unpractical that is probably unexplainable for someone who takes a more practical posture. So don't wait for an explanation here, because I still can't get it completely. I feel it's the same way I can't get poetry. For me it's like "oh cool, the words rhyme", but for others it releases feelings, emotions. I'm not saying I have no emotions: I do love, cry... I don't think anyone is entirely practical, in fact, I don't think anyone is entirely anything. There's no black and white. Nevertheless, there is a world of feelings connected to impracticality which I don't understand - and wish I could.

I guess the whole conflict comes about when the spiritual people try to bring any practicality to their spiritual search. When they start praying for things, talking about physical hell, virgin rewards, forbidden food, divine punishments - then they simply sound like fools, and rock the boat for all the other spiritual people. And when they try to change laws and impose weird systems of belief, they go from fools to intolerant bastards. There's nothing practical about spirituality. If God, ghosts, spirits, vampires, unicorns go beyond what's natural, trying to apply a cause-effect relationship to those is against their very nature. In Brasil people say that "God writes right along twisty lines", meaning we cannot read it. So even if there's a God and you think you are reading the lines, don't expect to convince any practical (or reasonable, for that matter) person, because it just doesn't make sense.

You know, just because I'm not here talking about the beauties of the spiritual world, it doesn't mean I'm against it. I'm aware that I might sound harsh sometimes. But the truth is that I see a lot of people who do get something out of the spiritual world, and I try to find it too, to have that experience. I want to get the most of my brief life, and maybe there's this whole world I'm missing out. And now that I've realized how practical I am I can start looking at a bigger picture. I read somewhere that while it's difficult for religious people to question their views, the non religious can change their opinions without major changes to their lives. I'm glad I'm in the flexible side, and I hope I can understand more about the other side with time. I think this new angle of practicality is a good beginning - what do you think? Am I totally off?

Bureaucracy vs Online Videos

2010-01-02T01:42:00.005+09:00

The usual way is not the way.

Recently I posted the video below on YouTube, a little reminder of the excessive packaging of everything here in Japan. I thought it would have a surprising ending, because as you get out of Mr Donuts with a simple doughnut and coffee, it looks like you just came from a heated shopping spree. The video was far from a direct attack on Mr Donuts, this being one of my favorite chains ever. It was a mere example of how wasteful packaging in Japan is, from individually wrapped cookies to convenience store tampons.

After a few views, one of the comments I got was that instead of wasting time making videos, it would be more productive to work on the numbers and show Mr Donuts how much they would be saving to get that changed. Ok, let's try to make sense of things here...

From this guy's position, it's not really clear if what he is worried about is Mr Donuts' finances or the constant waste of the limited resources of our planet. To be fair, my position with the video is not clear either - I didn't see the need for further explanation, shame on me. But fine, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he is worried about finding a more effective way of improving our planet's situation.

First, comparing a video which took me 20 minutes to be put together with a financial report (or whatever these people call their long list of numbers) clearly puts the video in advantage for being practical. I don't think many people would be able to make such a report quickly enough and still manage to have some powerful people read it. Besides, seriously, is Mr Donuts by any chance a chain of sweet old men who like to cook donuts for the simple pleasure of putting a smile on a kid's face? Please, don't insult them CEOs, because they already know their numbers very well.

Now, if his point was that making a video is not going to change anything, I can't say much about it. Nobody can, actually, all we can do is wait and see. But I do have a few considerations to make. While my video is a simple way to make people stop and think, even if just for a second, how much impact could an elaborate report have - if taken seriously? As my assumption is that Mr Donuts is already fully aware of how much they are spending on packaging, I don't think it would change much. If they've been paying the costs, it's because they are getting return - because the consumers are giving them return. Knowing the Japanese culture of serving well and pretty, I can see the risks Mr Donuts wouldn't be willing to take with their clients.

So if we agree that what has to be changed is the consumer's mindset, I guess my little video is one tiny little part of it. Changes in culture, mentality, zeitgeist, are made of many little things like this. Little people talking to each other and passing the thoughts ahead. The evolution of memes, change in behavior, change in reality.

Corporation reports are for people who trust the system. But let me help you here. Watch the video again and tell me, is this an efficient system? Or is it because of this system that we are collectively exchanging our planet for some doughnuts? Food for thought ;)

People and their jobs...

2009-12-30T23:42:00.001+09:00

Do we really have a choice?

Today I came across this website, which has great photos of people working all around the world. It reminded me of this saying we have in Brasil: "O trabalho engrandece o homem." I'm not sure if there's a corresponding saying in English, meaning basically "work aggrandizes men". These sayings... I really wonder who has been saying them...

I guess the supposed lesson in this saying is something like the value of persevering, of trying hard, of disciplining oneself - basically the Japanese idea of gambaru. And of course, I can see the value in all that. Giving up easily is definitely not ideal. However, what makes me sad is where people have to put their efforts on. Work has become an end in itself. All around the world, people are gambaru-ing, finding satisfaction in persevering for something other than their own dreams. For food, status, stability... The reasons are many but the truth is one: spending more time on the things you love, than on your responsibilities, is a luxury only a few enjoy.

Actually, given the circumstances and the sad inevitable situation in which some people find themselves in, I'm glad that they can find their happiness despite their work. I mean, it's for sure better than having to work AND being unhappy. It's just that I think people deserve more... Every single person in this planet deserves the chance to follow their dreams, to persevere for what they choose to, to develop their true potential. No one deserves to spend their lives doing something just because there was no better alternative. And everyone should know that. Everyone should be aware that they, as well as everyone else, deserve more. No one should be tricked into believing work aggrandizes men.

Looking at these pictures, I hope these people have found happiness in what they unfortunately have to do. But I also hope they haven't forgotten who they are and what are their own unique dreams. I hope they know that a factory worker, a janitor, or an operator is not who they are. They are individuals much more important and unique than their positions in society, and their dreams are as important as mine or yours.

But these people who didn't really have a chance are not the only ones persevering in their work, and that's the part which puzzles me the most. All around me I see people worried about getting a job. I don't blame them, I know my time will come eventually. But why are they gambaru-ing so much for that? Trying so hard... Specially here in Japan where you get hired by a company having no idea what your actual tasks will be. You are just an employee, with no say as to what you will be actually doing. Preparations for job interviews, endless hours of study... for that? To work for others? What is it that they are looking for, is it the stability so they have spare time to follow their dreams, or is it the aggrandizing, all the virtues you get from working? What are YOU looking for?

RepRap: Wealth Without Money...

2009-12-21T20:33:00.011+09:00

The ignition we had been waiting for!

The video is pretty self-explanatory. RepRaps, or Replicating Rapid-prototypers, are 3D printers: you attach them to your computer, download free models from the internet and print out solid objects. A cup, a hanger, a button, a cute little toy... Why having them brought all the way from China, smelling like underpaid kid's sweat, if you can fabricate them right on your desktop?

I hadn't got this excited hearing a new idea since I watched Zeitgeist Addendum! Zeitgeist showed me I wasn't the only crazy one who thinks that the social systems we have today lack in objectivity and therefore are unjust. The subjectivity of people's opinions as to how things should work does not necessarily come along justice, and that's why we live subject to the will of governments, corporations and any other powerful bastards. Zeitgeist is awesome, but it does leave a lot of questions unanswered, specially about how to perform the big leap from the inequality inherent to capitalism to the justice of an egalitarian world, free from the usual greed which comes along monetary systems. How to empower people to live in a technological world free from governments and corporations? RepRap is the beginning of the answer.

The idea of desktop 3D printers has been around for a while. Lately I had been particularly interested in Fabber, another open-source 3D printer, but I guess there was something missing in it to make me extremely happy. And this little detail, RepRap got just right. A philosophy. While Fabber is presented more like a new past time for tech geeks, RepRap brings a message of equality, justice and finally: freedom. Just the subtitle makes a bunch of emotions jump up and down inside me: Wealth Without Money. Oh yeah!

I was surprised when I realized that RepRap seems to be perfectly fit for the job of freeing the world exactly because of its primary concept: the machine should be able to replicate itself. That is, with one RepRap you can print a new one, then another one an so on. Once you have one, you got total independence. With one of these you are not a consumer, you are a "produser". It also calls attention for the materials being used to print out objects, RepRaps are already making things from Polylactic Acid, which is like a plastic, but comes from the fermentation of starch. As Adrian Bowyer says in his introduction to RepRap, this means that a poor community can build their first printer, plant some corn and have the printer produce more machines which will produce more objects. Wealth without money!

And RepRap started with the right foot. It's completely open source. Since its birth it has been under the GNU General Public License, which assures no one will profit from it, so it belongs to all humanity. All its information can be found online, so anyone can build it. As reproductive "beings" they will be subject to evolution and every new generation will bring new features, printing faster, using more types of materials, and the best thing: you can make yourself a newer RepRap model using your old one. As for all the trash this new way of fabricating will generate? Polylactic Acid is biodegradable, so you just bury your old machines and broken gadgets in your backyard, and in 6 months they are gone and nurturing your next crop to make starch.

What are we waiting for, right? Personally, I'm planning to build one for myself next year when I'll have more free time. As of now, RepRap still requires some electronic and mechanic skills and tools to be built. And once it's done, of course it's not like it will print out all my $1,99 goods - the machine is still slow, there are not so many models online yet, etc. It's still a work in progress... Nevertheless, it is a great project with profound implications to our world. And hey, a cool DIY little project, don't you think? In some months I might be printing one out for you - for free ;)

Forbid it all!

2009-12-08T10:54:00.016+09:00

For the sake of society and oppression of the individual!

Recently the people of JR, the national rail company in Japan, have decided to use the speakers of the station near my house for more than methodically announcing which trains are coming or asking smokers not to slowly poison others. As if listening to the same old messages everyday wasn't disturbing enough, now they repeatedly play a tape with the same acute Japanese voices kindly informing us about how nice JR is to be giving seasonal discounts. The same message in a loop, which you might listen to about 3 or 4 times in a row depending on how unlucky you were with the train times. This honey to the ears coming from the very company which forbids cellphone talks on trains. Because, well, THAT certainly would disturb people's peace much more than if you were talking to the person next to you.

For some reason, this whole thing reminds me of a law that came up in Brasil years ago (which I believe has been removed already) forbidding liquid alcohol. If you wanted to have a barbecue of disinfect something, you had to use alcohol in gel, because apparently there were many cases of kids suffering burns with the easy-to-spill liquid one.

Aren't all these measures fantastic? No cellphones, no liquid alcohol! I think they are. I think knives should be forbidden for their potential as weapons and we all should be tearing our steak with our teeth instead. We should forbid kids from happily screaming in parks so people passing by don't lose their precious concentration while they walk in public. We should also forbid escalators, because hey, some people get their crocs sucked in. (Oh wait, Japanese media has already been working on this case for a while, as I was happy to learn about at my engineering ethics class. Ah, these Japanese, always a step ahead when it comes to social order! さすが日本人！)

Yeah let's forbid it all! Anything which is even slightly potentially dangerous or might be disturbing someone who is in a public loud environment. It's ok, common people's convenience, time and happiness can be put aside for these great causes. But of course let's not forget that there are things which we shouldn't forbid by no means. Cars and trains themselves are great causes of accidents and sound pollution, but hey, they are important right? An announcement about the McDonald's at the next bus stop is also worthy of every one's attention. And imagine how horrible would it be if we forbid politicians to scream on the streets - oh democracy and freedom of speech!

I mean, what is a mere idividual's comfort close to a great gain for society. Order instead of chaos. There go the sheep. That's what governments are there for, right? To protect us from our own bad judgement... Certain things we just can't seem to figure out by ourselves or with our fellow humans. Certainly I wouldn't be able to convince someone sitting next to me on the train to keep their voice down by kindly saying I have a headache. No no, I wouldn't expect anyone to be that nice, all I can expect is that they follow rules.

Ah... I hope escalators are gone before I get my havaianas stuck on them by accident!

Dangerous Japanese Escalators

Are you offended?

2009-12-06T11:04:00.010+09:00

Well I'm just ashamed...

The other day I was hanging out with some friends from various countries, just talking and eating at a guy's place. That's when someone noticed the guy had a Bible, which he said he received as a gift and respected it for the friend who he got it from. The reactions were varied, from the one who was in the corner fearing another religious discussion to the one who loudly laughed at the fact that the most sold book in history is found even at an Indian guy's place.

I was the closest one to the book, so I thought that if someone were to do something about it it should be me. I wasn't in the mood for arguing, so I just opened the book and started reading a few passages.
Leviticus, because I think it's a very entertaining book showing how human beings once had no knowledge or sense of tolerance. I hadn't read even a few lines when a guy asked me to stop with a bargain "you can make fun of me anytime, go ahead, but never make fun of god or sacred things!"

Even though I have no idea as to how was I making fun of either, I was simply reading the so called words of god, I stopped because he seemed deeply annoyed. Please note that he is not even Christian, but actually a Muslim. The reason he gave for defending the Bible against my somehow funny reading was that no matter the religion, if it is a sacred book and there are people believing in it, it should be respected. It's sacred, the word of God, unquestionable and apparently unreadable.

I didn't want trouble, so the topic died there. Well, at least externally, because for the past few weeks this little event hasn't left my mind. He feels offended? I can make fun of him but not of any god? There's something very scary right there. This guy's whole sense of self is so disconnected from who he really is and instead completely embedded in what he blindly believes in. I started questioning who is he if nothing more than a follower?

And one thing I'm not sure if he cares about is what about me? Am I offended? Well, I wouldn't go as far as that, because taking offense is for the close-minded. I take opposing opinions as just alternative ways of thinking. Nevertheless, I do feel my stomach turning when I hear people talking like that. I feel embarrassment and shame.

I feel embarrassed for my species when I see other fellow humans being so weak and hopeless that they make up fairy tales in their head about some cosmic sugar daddy who will make their lives better. I feel ashamed to see people who were born with a brain just like mine giving up on living a beautiful life for a supposedly better death. I feel embarrassed when people can't see how beautiful the universe we live in is and make up alternative ones usually full of rules and threats which make life complicated. I feel ashamed when I see fellow humans teaching their kids to read an old book literally rather than to use their own heads. I feel ashamed that some people are so primitive as to need a hell threat to be nice to others. I feel ashamed because of women who instead of being proud of the beauty nature took billions of years to develop, prefer to walk around under scary black tents. I feel ashamed to see people who claim to have high morals being more worried about other people's sex life than about helping the ones in need. I feel ashamed that millions of human beings live like barbarians because of books which tell us nothing more than how human beings were once barbarians.

How did religion become so untouchable? How can it completely and ridiculously disrespect the reality in which we live in, destroying and wasting lives and still be in the right to feel offended? I'm not here to tell anyone that their god doesn't exist or that the rules by which they live don't make sense. They can do whatever they please with their lives as long as they don't do bad to others. I'm just not satisfied with religion's status to take anything as an offense while everyone else has to be ok with this mental dead weight society has been carrying throughout history. Are you offended? I just feel embarrassed for my fellow human beings...

I'll leave you with a passage from Leviticus 15 and few videos which came to my mind while I was writing this post.

"If a woman has a discharge, and the discharge from her body is blood, she shall be set apart seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening."

DIY to DYY: Do Yourself Yourself

2009-11-27T13:15:00.010+09:00

Be happy and let be happy...

Lately I've been thinking a lot about my way of seeing the world. Wondering if it makes sense or not, and wondering how can I express myself better. That's because from the comments I got on my last post, it seems like I'm not making myself understood very well, sometimes even to myself. So with a lot of reflection and friend's advices, I've come to realize a few things in this beginning of my recovery.

After reading my post, one of my friends said "For you to be free is the ideal of living, for me to be happy is the goal of life." To what I thought "how are these two different?" With this I finally realized that in the middle of the game, I ended up confusing means with ends. I got stuck in talking about freedom and forgot why I was all about freedom on the first place. I've always understood that my freedom was more than a simple freedom of speech, of choice or any of these common freedoms. It is a deeper and more meaningful freedom, a freedom of the mind. But freedom for what? Freedom to be happy! And that's the part I had strayed away from...

I've understood for a while that happiness comes only from inside us - nowhere else. External forces can only affect you if you allow them to. As a quote another friend sent me, "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent." This is deeply connected to my philosophy to be free, because if your mind is not free to accept what makes you happy, you might be dooming yourself by pursuing the ideal of happiness of others. Might sound exaggerated, but I guess this happens all the time. You always wanted to be an artist but entered law school because of society's pressure. You want to have sex with your boyfriend and feel guilty for having thoughts which God said are impure. You love sweets but you abstain from them because you feel a pressure to be thin. We are often making ourselves sad because we allow external things to talk louder than our deepest wishes and preferences. We let things affect us way too much - we are not free to be happy.

With this I realized my philosophy is not a simple live-and-let-live. It's a "be happy and let be happy". It's about being honest with yourself about what makes you happy and respecting other people's right to find their happiness wherever it is.

Something else also helped me to understand this better. Lately I've been trying to keep myself busy with other things besides the blog. Add to this my ever growing disappointment with the educational system I am in, and I found myself spending my time in a few DIY, do it yourself projects. If school is not going to give me the skills I want, I gotta acquire them by myself. I guess I've known that I had to take this step sooner or later, and I'm glad it came in a nice time when I can learn a lot from it.

The cool thing I realized is that this concept of doing it on your own terms and not waiting for others to do it for you, turns out to be very important not only for an aspiring engineer but also to anyone searching for happiness and peace of mind. Instead of trying to be the person which others tell us would be happy, we should try more often to do ourselves by ourselves. Be honest with ourselves about the way we feel and be the person who can achieve this unique ideal.

Don't just sit down waiting for TV, friends, family, school, etc. to tell you how you should be happy. Do yourself yourself, and never stop checking if you are really happy.

This is one of my recent DIY accomplishments =)

Adulthood Negativity

2009-11-15T15:27:00.015+09:00

The games of life...

I guess I was a normal little girl. I'd look at the way adults deal with things and everything seemed too complicated and difficult. Their games had much more complex rules and obstacles than the games I was used to. Why can't I just eat chocolate all the time? If wars are sad for both sides, why don't they just stop fighting? Why does God allow sadness in the world? All adults had similar answers "you will understand when you grow up... you still have much to learn... you don't know how the world works..." I was very suspicious. What else was there to know that I didn't? Obviously, if both sides refuse to fight, there's no war; if God is omnipotent and allows sadness he is not loving; if chocolate makes me happy I should eat it all the time! Why were adults always making things complicated? It fascinated me. So I promised myself that as I got older, I wouldn't let myself be easily caught into adult games of love, power, success, etc. I'd always remember the easiness and simplicity of looking at the world through a kid's eyes.

And so I did, the best I could. As I grew up I tried to maintain an objective look towards adult games in order to find out if they were really necessary. I noticed that not many other kids adopted the same posture though. Everyone around me seemed eager to learn the rules and enter the game. They'd rarely stop to wonder if the games were necessary or the reason some rules existed.

At school, subjects such as history and politics seemed like too much unnecessary complication and confusion to me. That's probably why I was always fonder of natural sciences, the inescapable truths about the world. For me, physics was pure simplicity, a bunch of complicated movements explained by this one little formula. Beautiful. I also never cared about the news, all the complex conflicts and problems explained with complicated words just didn't seem like the world I saw around me. My world was simple.

As years went by, it would become clearer that my way of seeing the world was quite different from those around me. It's as if all the others had built this adult mask in front of their eyes and would see this deep complication on everything, while my kiddie eyes were still almost intact. They would be so proud of making sense of the whole complication. "I understand the economic factors which lead to a nation's growth... I know exactly what to do so God takes me to heaven... I know how to successfully seduce a man and have him hooked on me..." They were really into the games, and as you would expect, not many people would take the little girl here seriously. She was too far behind for them. While they were trying to come up with newer and more complicated strategies, she was still wondering if strategies were necessary. Silly girl... The interesting thing is that every so often a friend would come to me asking for advice on adult problems. My advices were always along the lines of "you don't have to play the game, things are actually simpler than that..." to what they would say "I would be so much happier if things were as simple as you say... Why can't I see the simplicity the same way you do?" I didn't know, why can't they?

With many experiences like that, I came to the conclusion that the complication becomes more than just a mask before people's eyes. It actually gets inside their heads and eventually becomes part of who they are. It's not something you can just take off. Thanks to my skeptical point of view since little, I did manage to dodge most of the complication, but inevitably some became part of me, otherwise I wouldn't be able to live in society right now. But still, it's not like I fit in. I guess that's a natural consequence from not wanting to go with the flow. This made me feel alone with my points of view, because they didn't fit into any of the existing labels. It's true that from time to time people would listen to me and call me atheist, anarchist, but it never really convinced me. I felt that my point of view was not having a point of view, being always open to all the possibilities. Since people insisted on using words to define everything, I started defining myself as free - I have no labels or am static.

Free from complications, biases, rules - I try to make sense of the world with my own little head. One thing I used to do since little was to write down my ideas, which I'd not show anyone. That's because since early I learned the hard way from teachers and friends that I only made sense for myself. You might be wondering how did I end up writing a blog then. Well, the idea of putting my ideas out there anonymously was pretty charming. I'd keep on writing as always, have an online backup in case my notebooks catch fire or something, and might get other people's insights without feeling like I'm being judged by those around me. Perfect, to be Freeee!

Unfortunately, that's not how things happened. The first thing I did after writing my first post was to tell about it to everyone I knew, and that's how I started to lose my freedom. People I knew would give me their comments, positive or negative, both on the blog or in person. The difference in logic was becoming evident, I couldn't express myself properly and misunderstandings happened often. They would keep on calling me atheist, anarchist, bisexual, and it was all too fast for me. The adults were getting me little by little. All my easiness and simplicity were disappearing. I started to label myself in order to reply faster. I would constantly look for material which was close enough to my way of thinking in order to have more effective arguments, even if they didn't express exactly my way of seeing the world. If you want to speak up, people expect certain things from you. They poke you, support you... It's a whole new game with its own rules, and this new complication went undetected through my radar. I got caught, and I felt like it was me versus them. And little by little, I was becoming the anarchist, the atheist, the environmental fighter, the activist. What a leap!

So, for the past few months I've been living with a conflict inside myself. Have I finally found the balance between childhood and adulthood which allows me to to be free while making sense to others? Or am I losing my freedom? After a few episodes of heated discussions making people upset, I finally took a look at myself and saw a complicated difficult and unhappy adult. I wasn't really sure how or at which point it happened, so in order to organize my thoughts, I did what I usually do, write. And this post is the result of that.

Ok, so I've realized I've changed into this person I don't like. Where to go from now? Well, I want to be Freeee again. It's not as simple as I would expect though, all I have as guidance are my memories and old writings. In fact, it's being so hard that it gets me wondering if people who have been living in complexity for a long time would ever be able to see the simplicity if they wanted to. Complication is serious business.

Right now I'm under recovery, trying to keep a distance and organizing my thoughts. You know, this whole thing is tough, but I'm glad it happened. It feels nice to eventually look back at difficult times and be aware of how much it helped me to grow as a person. Living and learning, and always keeping an objective look towards myself. I learned for example, how different it is to give advice to someone who asks for it from discussing with people who are not willing to change their minds. The latter are usually very defensive, and if you don't take care, you might end up taking the same posture as them. Defending your position because that's your position, period. At the end of the day, I think the whole problem comes from having a position, trying to be static. You know what they say, people with good intentions are as bad as those with bad intentions.

I don't want to have intentions. I want to be Freeee, to go back to the happiness of simplicity. To see the world as it shows itself to my eyes. I'm not an activist, I'm not here to convince anyone. If one thing, I'm here as an example of innocent happiness.

Technology alone won't change anything

2009-11-05T11:59:00.019+09:00

The greatest limitations of our time are not technological...

If you are excited wondering which are going to be the next technologies which will revolutionize the world, you might be looking at the wrong direction. Most of the limitations we have to overcome at the moment are not technological; there are much more complex barriers, involving money, power, and sadly, ourselves.

Doesn't the picture above make you mad about how things work in our world? Let me summarize the drama for you. Apple won't allow flash applications on the iPhone because they are afraid iPhone users might get too happy with all the fun games, videos and interactivity powered by Adobe, and everyone will forget about iTunes App Store. Makes perfect economic sense, even a kid gets it... Apple is already the leader of the smart phones market, making tons of money with their monopoly over the applications ran in their phone. Why to allow flash and lose a lot of money when they can continue having total control over what we do with our phones? (When you bought your iPhone you thought it now belonged to you, but the truth is that deep inside it will always belong to Apple. Oh of course you can jailbrake it, but keep in mind that Apple's ownership of what you do with your phone is protected by laws, so setting yourself free might put you in trouble with other big guys, the government... Typical...)

That's the world where we live in, where power and money always speak louder than every one's comfort and happiness. Is economics, capitalism really for our own good? Don't answer yet, I have another one: have you asked yourself why do you still have to pay expensive phone bills, specially when abroad? Skype has been out there for years, but mysteriously it hasn't been properly embedded to handsets. Is it really due to a technological limitation that we still cannot call anywhere in the world from our hand phones just paying an Internet fee? Humm...

If the whole mobile phone talk hasn't convinced you yet, once more I'll give the example of the electric car, because it can never be stressed too much. In 1996 General Motors developed the EV1, an electric car which ran as fast as any gasoline car but with the advantages of being incredibly silent, and costing less to charge than it would cost to fill with gas. What happened to it? Again there's a lot of drama, but the sad ending is the technology being bought by oil companies and simply taken away from the public.

Is technology what we are still missing? As Clay Shirky puts it, "The revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new tools. It happens when society adopts new behaviors." When are we going to stop waiting for Apple and Adobe to make some economic agreement, or for some big company to find out how to profit from Skype phones, or for some big car company to fight with the oil industry and go for electric cars? When is common sense going to change from "that makes sense, the company would lose money" to "that makes sense, it's so much better for everyone"?

Tradition explains all the craziness on Earth

2009-10-23T14:12:00.005+09:00

The ET from How to Succeed on Earth needs more questions answered, this is the reply.

Yo dude! It's nice to hear from you!

Well, actually, I wasn't expecting to hear from you so early, you've got so many questions so fast! It reminds me of my first years on this planet, crazy times... But yeah, don't worry, I know where all these questions are coming from, and I know exactly how to make things a bit clearer for you. The key to understanding how people think on Earth is in a very weird concept of theirs called "tradition".

Tradition is basically the idea that old ways of doing things are safer and more reliable than new ways, because they have survived over time. Doesn't make any sense, right? But let me explain to you exactly the way they think. They tell kids not to question the elder because they have been here longer and therefore should know better. And the older an idea is, the less they encourage others to think critically about it, because it has passed some sort of "test of time". Yeah, they have a big trouble understanding that each new generation lives in an entire new world, and that as time goes by, it's important for the old generations to get updated, not for the new ones to be held back...

You must be wondering, just like I used to, how could they possibly have progressed the bit they have if most of their actions are guided by this tradition thing. Well, I took a look into their history and found out that the people who did contribute to progress in the past were exactly the ones who challenged the traditions of their time and shifted paradigms. No big surprise in there, it's obvious that if every one of them had simply followed tradition, no progress would have ever been made. The funny thing is that most of them, until today, haven't realized that.

They look back at those revolutionary people and instead of doing as they did, they try to do exactly as they said. Amazingly ironic, no? Instead of realizing that their actions are valuable exactly because they broke old traditions, humans think that the right thing to do is to transform their legacy into new traditions which should be followed and honored. The extent to which they do it varies from person to person, some don't really care, others try to follow it in strict or even funny ways.
And as you would expect, this generates war, sadness, misunderstanding and confusion for many of them.

Tradition usually follows progress in all areas of knowledge, from science to society. As an example, let me tell you about this guy who lived about 2000 years ago (which for them is a long time). Their historical records are questionable, but what matters is that a lot of people nowadays believe that this guy changed a lot of the traditions of his time. Among other things, he is believed to have said for the first time that all human beings are the same, and that you shouldn't do to others that which you don't want done to yourself. Pretty basic stuff, but revolutionary for the time, so you can imagine how messy the traditions before him were... But what lots of people are doing today is trying to live exactly how this Jesus guy said, without even stoping to wonder if everything he said has any value today. Instead of following the guy's example and questioning old ways of thinking, they go all traditional on him and behave on ways which are funny even for Earth standards. Yeah, of course most of the stuff he said doesn't make any sense anymore, but at that time he couldn't know better. The interesting thing is that thanks to tradition, many modern humans also don't know better.

So is everything making more sense now? All these things you asked me about: government, rituals, educational systems, religion, money, and many other ideas developed on Earth are barely questioned due to strong traditions, and the people who thought of them are constantly praised. Most humans grow up being taught that questioning adults is wrong, and at school they have no say on what kind of knowledge they are going to learn, so when they reach an age when their opinions are finally asked, it's usually too late for them to start thinking by themselves, being critical and inovative.

I hope this all helped. As to how to deal with this tradition thing, I advice you to go with the flow and follow one or other tradition never questioning anything. The ones who dare to criticize it usually go through a lot of trouble, because everyone around them is used to taking tradition very personaly and sometimes get very violent and irrational.

Let me know if you'd like me to explain something more specific! Good luck over there!

Sacrificing Convenience for the Environment?! - Blog Action Day 2009

2009-10-15T12:03:00.007+09:00

It's not about doing it less, it's about doing it right.

We are used to seeing the environmental issue tightly connected to something very basic: convenience. We are constantly told that in order to save our planet, we have to fly less, cook more, drive less, plant more, buy less, recycle more, etc. We are asked to sacrifice all the comfort we've got used to for something more important - the Earth. No other option is given. It's not surprising that most of us continue to carelessly destroy our planet - we are simply not comfortable enough with the sustainable alternatives presented.

But are these really the only two options we have? To destroy our planet or to live without the conveniences which we believe make us happy? To answer this question, we have to think about two separated issues: Do we need conveniences in order to be happy? And can we only have these conveniences by destroying our planet?

Saying we need technological conveniences in order to be happy is to say everyone was unhappy 3000 years ago. Of course human beings don't "need" such things; happiness can be found in a variety of places. And that's the fact which most people involved in the fight for the environment count on: if it's possible to be happy without certain technologies, we just have to convince the modern man to abstain from certain conveniences. In fact, most of the efforts in getting people to help with the environment are about some sort of sacrifice. All we hear is that we should change our ways, and that's often presented as if we had to go back to a time when there were no cars, no planes, no industrial food. This is obviously a dangerous approach, and it has unfortunately been backfiring. Instead of caring more, most people say "if it's my convenience or the environment, fuck the environment."

One thing is for the ancient man to be satisfied with certain dreams 3000 years ago. Dreams of flying, of not needing to hunt for food, of having fresh water to drink in the desert. Another completely different thing is to convince the modern man that he should drive less, plant more, and be happy with ancient dreams. Yes, sacrificing wherever we can helps a lot, but putting the problem in these terms is not going to work fast enough on the modern man. Nature has taken billions of years to get where it is now; culture has taken thousands to get where we are now as well. The same way that we can't just grow back our devastated forests, we can't ask humanity to slow down as a whole. All we can do now is move forward. Replant forests, rediscover convenience. Which leads me to the second question...

Do we have to destroy our planet in order to have the comfort we'd like? No. And this is a fact. With already existing technology and technologies we are very close to obtaining, it's possible to travel fast, eat as much as we want, use all the gadgets we want - all in a sustainable way, for every single person on the planet. Fossil fuels have been technologically obsolete for decades, as we found out various smarter ways of producing energy which go beyond solar and wind power. The amount of raw product necessary to produce consumer goods can already be cut down if we give the consumer nicer ways to upgrade their old models. The environmental cost of food can already be drastically cut if we bring the farms to where people are. The truth is that for every sacrifice we are being asked to make, there's already a very convenient and green way of doing it.

Then why are we still asked to make sacrifices? Why are we told that we have to do it less, when actually all we have to do is do it right? Well, it's a long story, involving governments, corporations and irresponsible greed. And it is very well presented in Leonardo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour movie. Yeah, I was surprised when I saw his name as well, but actually this is in my opinion the best movie addressing the environmental problem out there. Particularly because it doesn't put us as the ones to blame or as the victims of our ancestors' choices - it puts us as the ones who are going to fix the world. It counts with the presence of many important names in various areas, including Stephen Hawking. Very powerful movie, highly recommended.

The bottom line is, let's stop talking about sacrifices - which might even help for now but won't work forever - and start talking about solutions. Let's demand for existing technology to be put in use now! Let's help each other to put it in use by ourselves without depending on big institutions. Let's progress respecting the only true limitation we have: not the economy, but the valuable resources of our planet. And please, pretty please, let's respond to those who tell you to make sacrifices by telling them it's a very beautiful thing to put the environment before their convenience of the body, but even better would be for them to put it before the convenience of the mind: stop being passive and do something. Thank you.

A few links to smart alternative technologies which should be put in practice now!

EV1: GM's electric vehicle
Sustainable Dance Club: dance floor that captures the energy of dancing
Energy-generating revolving door
Poo-powered buses
Human hair replaces silicon
... and more. If you look for it, you will find it! ;)

The end of Professions

2009-09-28T13:33:00.003+09:00

In the future, making a living will be disconnected from making money.

Professionals do things not many people can do. Whether due to a natural talent or to a learned specialization, professionals are valuable because they are scarce. Not everyone can play football as well as a professional player, not everyone can build a rocket without spending years learning physics. Professionals make money out of their special abilities, and in our world, making money is making a living. So what happens when the scarcity of old professions is overcome by new technologies or social changes; when professions become obsolete?

Throughout history, professionals have come and gone along with the scarcity which used to make them necessary. Once we found ways of raising cattle, hunters weren't necessary anymore; when printing books became possible, scribes were dismissed; and so on... It's an inevitable trend that is still happening. Nowadays we have, for example, digital cameras, personal computers and internet, which help us easily create and share basically any kind of creative content, such as music, movies and pictures. This represents a threat to whole industries which have been developed around the scarcity of means of distribution. Are record labels still necessary between musicians and listeners? No. And the same is happening to professionals in various areas...

While the tendency of professions to disappear is good for the consumer, who gets less dependent on specialized people who want a lot of money for their services, for the professional this is seen as a threat. They usually spent their whole lives preparing to do some specific job, so they can make money, so they can make a living. And when they are not necessary anymore, they struggle to make themselves still needed. That's what we see happening in the music industry nowadays. Record labels are using the power which they obtained in a time of scarcity to try to prolong this very scarcity which made them powerful on the first place. They pressure governments to punish anyone who represents a threat to their traditional ways of doing things. It's not of their interest for us to move on to independency.

This power traditional companies have to prolong scarcity is frightening. And professionals in the music industry are not the only ones in danger. I believe that most professions there are nowadays, if not all of them, will become obsolete at some point in history when technology overcomes the need for them. Will we need doctors when machines can perform surgery even better than they do? I don't think so, but I bet they will try to convince us we do. Imagine, for example, if the technology to plant, harvest and cook food automatically and sustainable, without the need for humans, is developed. There would be no reason for anyone to pay for food anymore, which is a good, awesome thing! ...not for the powerful food companies, and they will fight against such things. Their interests are not our interests.

So exactly how far can technology go on replacing professionals? That's impossible to foresee, all we can do is wait. Will we not need architects, computer programmers, engineers in the future? Maybe not, maybe yes, maybe new professions will come up. However, what I think will happen is the disconnection of making a living from having a special ability. People will not be required to do something in order to live in society, they will be able to do something if they want to, and if they don't want to, they don't need to. Most people nowadays might think that in a world like this, no one would do anything and live a lazy life. Even though I don't see how this could be bad, I really think it wouldn't happen. Even without the money motive, which basically says "do something or live in the margin of society", people would still have many motives to do things. Why are millions of people dedicating so much time to help Wikipedia, post videos on Youtube, develop free software?

The desire to help others, to feel needed, or simply fame seem to be good enough reasons for people to contribute to society. I see a future where researchers find out new things for the simple pleasure of doing so. People will learn things they actually want to learn with the help of technological tools, and when they use this knowledge to create something new, they will use the same tools to spread their idea around. I see a future of empowerment for the masses, where traditional professionals or governments won't be able to prolong unnecessary scarcity anymore. How fast this will happen, is a matter of where most people are concentrating their efforts on at the moment. On whose side are you?

"Made in China" to the rescue!

2009-09-14T21:56:00.018+09:00

Chinese fakes might rescue the interests behind technology: from corporations back to consumers.

China has been looked down as the land of pirated products for a while. Now, that's a bad image about to be turned into something good. With every big multinational company having at least one factory over there, the knowledge necessary to build any of the top consumer electronics in the world is accessible to Chinese engineers and factory workers. Although they have been using it to make exact copies of original models with cheaper materials so far, copies that are disregarded by the rest of the world for being of inferior quality, a twist is coming. And the big companies are afraid. The Chinese have now started innovating in ways the traditional companies are not allowed to. For the consumer, that's a good thing, at least for now.

The big shift can be seen, for example, on the cellphone industry. Some Chinese models now bring original features such as 2 slots for SIM cards, which allow you to use 2 companies at the same time, or free TV which captures the usual analog signals our TVs at home have been getting for free since ever. These are both very convenient tools for the consumer, but why are they not on the "proper" phones? What happens is that cellphone companies usually sell the machine at the same time as the service, and therefore, they have certain power of influencing which features will be included - or not - on new models. It makes sense for a company not to allow a second slot on your phone so you can't enjoy some of the competition's special prices, and for them to charge you for TV which comes through their network instead of allowing you to capture free signals. They have the power to put their interests above the consumers' interests.

The consumer is in a very vulnerable position, with big corporations controlling the final product according to their interests and pressuring governments to punish those who produce fakes. It means that the product which legally comes to us is not necessarily the top existing technology or the most convenient to us. It's just good enough to make us want to buy it. Technology has been hijacked by the powerful few, who develop it not thinking "what do people need?" but "what can we make people buy?" It might seem like we are lost, but the Chinese fakes give me hope.

The Chinese government seems to be wanting their country to follow the path taken by Japan and Korea after 1945, when they started developing their own technological knowledge by producing cheap imitations. The same way, controlling piracy seems to be the last priority in China at the moment. This opens way for the pirates, who don't answer to any big companies or governments, and are not asking for a lot of money for their ideas, to provide useful features. With these two advantages, the biggest gap still separating them from the dominant products is the inferior materials they are made of. It might seem that it would be better for everyone if this gap were to be overcome, but actually, it will all depend on the Chinese when the day comes.

Japan and Korea's path out of the imitations was to leave piracy and follow the global capitalist flow. If China does the same, it means one less hope for us to be set free from corporations and their interests. However, it doesn't take a lot of hope to expect history not to repeat itself. Taking into account that shifts in paradigm are the only constant in history, hardly the same path will be taken. Corporations making more money and getting more powerful without protecting everyone's best interest? China has the chance to change that. When the time comes, we can count on 1 billion of Chinese customers who are used to having their own interests translated into products not to allow corporations to have the final say on technology anymore.

The following is a funny video about how corporations couldn't care less about the costumer's convenience... Enjoy ^^

Ruuru wo Mamoru vs Jeitinho Brasileiro

2009-09-10T11:46:00.017+09:00

Different ways of solving daily problems. Different ways of creating more problems.

I grew up in Brazil, and over there, a widely accepted approach to rules is the so called "jeitinho brasileiro", the "Brazilian way". This special way involves one or more persons facing a problem and coming up with a solution among them which doesn't necessarily respect the laws imposed by the government. If there's a will, there's a little Brazilian way. It's a very effective problem-solving tool in a country where laws and bureaucracy don't seem to be helping; but it can also be a big problem if people use it selfishly. The jeitinho brasileiro is constantly criticized by Brazilians themselves, who blame it for our under-development. If only we obeyed all the laws, we would live in a perfect unicorn land... people think.

When I turned 18, I moved to the ultimate unicorn land in the world: Japan. I summarize the approach to rules and laws by Japanese people in the expression "ruuru wo mamoru", meaning "obey the rules", or literally, "protect the rules". I had an idea about this approach before I came, and as most people, I thought it was a desirable way of thinking and it should be taken as an example. Disappointed I was after a few months here. With no doubt, society as a whole ticked like a clock. However, I got scared about what it did to individual people. Did I really want that for my country and for the whole world?

Ruuru wo mamoru is taken incredibly seriously by the Japanese in their daily life, and there's no space at all for the jeitinho brasileiro here. They have so much faith in the system they are in, that it seems like they wouldn't question it twice. Can you blame them? They "protect the rules" because the rules seem to be actually protecting them. However, I can't help but feeling that the price to pay is too high...

There's a daily life situation I like to use to illustrate my concerns about this almost blind rule following; I call it "the red light law", nothing related to prostitution though ;) Well, in Brazil, red traffic lights are usually respected by both cars and pedestrians most of the time. What happens is that, when a car is completely alone in a dark street at night, it's common sense that the car doesn't need to stop; or if someone wants to cross the road and they can see that there are no cars coming, they don't need to waste their time waiting for the green light. On the other hand, in Japan most people are ruled by "the red light law". The common thing to see here is a lot of people waiting for the green light to give them permission to cross, even though there are no cars around. They just stand there... waiting to be told what to do.

There's another situation which has been stuck in my mind since I saw it happening for the first time a long time ago. Back in Osaka, I was outside a train station late at night and the last bus going from there to a distant residential area was about to leave. That's when I saw a sarariman coming out of the station running like crazy towards the bus just to get there seconds after the bus left. He gets sad and sits down, recovering his breath and probably calculating how expensive the taxi back home is going to be. You know where the bus was during this? Ten meters ahead stopped at a traffic light. Stopped. I sat there staring at the scene, which took so long that the sarariman could have easily walked to the bus three times. Needless to say that he didn't, and the bus eventually left. In Japan, buses have an exact time to leave, and are not allowed to take passengers far from the bus stops. Laws are inflexible, and everyone is aware of that. Makes me wonder why in Japan the buses are driven by human beings instead of going on automatic pilot. The law in Brazil is the same: no picking up unless it's a bus stop - but drivers do that all the time!

These two are just examples of the differences in approach to law in the two countries. I hate generalizations, so I hope no one takes it as if I am saying all Japanese people do is following the rules instead of using their heads to make intelligent decisions which help them and others. I'm not saying all Brazilian people do is completely ignore the rules either. My point here is that, even though the common behavior in Japan tends to be seen as superior to the Brazilian one, the truth is that both have desirable points - and undesirable ones!

Every rule is there for a reason. In the two simple examples presented here: traffic lights are there to give both people and cars a chance to pass; and bus stops are there to make sure the bus won't need to stop constantly. Simple, any kid can see the logic in this. Being fully aware of these reasons, a Brazilian pedestrian wouldn't abuse the traffic lights and keep the cars from passing on their turn, and a Japanese wouldn't stand there waiting as if the red light represented the unquestionable truth that if you cross, you will die. Also, Brazilian bus drivers wouldn't stop every time they see a lazy hot blonde who doesn't want to walk to the stop, and Japanese ones wouldn't simply refuse to open the doors even though they are stopped on the traffic light.

Making people understand that certain behaviors are desirable for their own good is very different from imposing laws. Simply saying "do this!" is not only insulting to a person's capacity to understand what is good, but it also can spoil adults into behaving like kids who need to be told what to do. I don't think all human beings have to be like Brazilians and do as they please disregarding others, and I don't think all humans have to be inflexible like the Japanese and become incapable of deciding by themselves what is ok or not. I want the world to think. I want the world to exchange inflexible laws by simple guidelines which advice people rather than giving them orders. I wish the world saw how education is much more important than laws and punishment.

Tech, not-yet-tech, not-at-all-tech

2009-09-04T16:47:00.025+09:00

Stop feeding the problem and go help find the solution!

Science and technology are often criticized and blamed for bad things happening in the world. That's deeply unfair due to the very nature of these concepts. First of all, science is nothing more than a tool to find out sets of rules which simplify natural phenomena in a way human beings can understand them. Just that, a tool of understanding. Physical laws are not to be taken as the ultimate truth about nature: they are just a way we, mere humans, found to predict what will happen in some situations. Science found out, for example, that under certain conditions, mixing some elements creates a little explosion. If that will be used in the making of a bomb, or a car's motor, is out of the scope of science; combustion, by itself, is not good or bad.

Which brings us to technology. Technology can have various meanings, but the most common is something like "applied science", which for me, is a very simplistic way of looking at it. What is "applied science" can be called just like that, "applied science". Technology involves more; it's related to progress, to making our lives easier and better. I like to see technology as "the application of science in making human beings' lives better on this planet."

Therefore, for something to be classified as technology, in my view, it has to fit 2 rules: First, it has to be in tune with the resources available in our planet. That is, if something pollutes or carelessly uses up the limited resources available in our planet, it is not technology. How can something that will eventually make our planet inhabitable be possibly considered good for human beings? The second rule is about including every single human being on the planet. For something to really be technology, it has to take into account that every human being will have access to that, and still, the planet will be able to hold it. Excluding other human beings is not only immoral, but directly against progress, since it generates war and sadness.

According to my definition of technology, it could never be responsible for any harm to ourselves or to our planet. But not everyone sees technology the same way I do, so let me talk about 2 other concepts, which in my opinion are wrongly called technology and unfairly put next to those things which are actually beneficial to us.

One of them, I call not-yet-tech. These would be things which make our lives relatively easier for now, but under the cost of our environment or our health. And these are costs we don't want to pay. Most resources found in the known world are finite or renewable to a certain extent. Not-yet-techs depend on finite resources or don't respect the rate of renewal of others. Not only not-yet-techs themselves come with an expiration date, but they impose a limit until when our planet will be able to hold life, and this means putting an expiration date on human beings. The difference between technology and not-yet-tech is the difference between, for example, an electric car and a gasoline one. While electricity can be obtained in sustainable ways and is a perpetual resource, petrol is not only finite, but its use is also destroying our planet. Gasoline is a not-yet-tech. Other not-yet-techs threat our health even more directly, such as pesticides.

Besides the not-yet-techs, there is a whole bunch of things which are even more detrimental to our planet and our lives and bring no benefits at all to humanity. I will call them not-at-all-techs. This is the case of, for example, warfare, which goes directly against both of my previously stated rules of technology, since it destroys human beings and the environment at the same time.

Other not-at-all-techs would be things which pretend to be new technologies but are actually old technologies disguised into something new just to make us buy them all over again. For example, technology evolves, and every year you can buy a faster computer. What most people don't know is that they can make their old computer as fast as this new one just by changing a few little chips inside it. It's not necessary to throw the whole thing away every time, but that's not what advertisement and media want us to believe. This kind of advertising-supported not-at-all-tech is irresponsibly using up our resources and making piles of trash which are quickly destroying our planet and aggravating inequalities around the world.

I think true technology shall save us all. Actually, it might be the only way of preventing our specie's extinction. We need more people developing technology and less people perpetuating not-yet-techs and not-at-all-techs. And every single one of us can help in this mission: making our planet sustainable for 6 billion people (and counting). Technology has done so much for us already! We've gone from complete misunderstanding the world to planning trips to the moon and peeking on electron's movements. We cannot make a sustainable world for every one of us? Pshh, yeah right!

If you are an engineer, rather than working on new weapons, prettier polluting vehicles, and such, why not work on alternative energy sources, or goods more accessible to poor people? If you are a pharmacist, rather than researching rich-people medicine such as those to lose weight, why don't you look for the cure to diseases which are killing thousands in poor countries? If you work in advertising, rather than looking for ways to persuade people into buying things they don’t need, why not actually informing customers about how can they improve their life without harming the Earth? Each one of us could be doing much better.

An example of people who are really trying to develop technology is the guy in the video below. He wants to make eyeglasses accessible to every human being, saving up all the resources which were involved in making prescription glasses, including an ophthalmologist's time. Oh yeah, if you are one of those who think that technology is evil for taking away jobs, I think you have forgotten that life is not about doing what a machine could be doing.

How to succeed on Earth

2009-07-31T11:53:00.005+09:00

Advices from an ET to his friend.

Yo man, I hope you are excited about your first visit to Earth! Don’t forget your breather; the air here is destroyed… Also, could you bring me one of those teleporting machines? It’s just too hard to move around here with people checking you in every artificial border they’ve created…

So, you wanted to know how to succeed in this planet… I got to tell you, things here work totally different from the way we are used to, but it’s an adventure in itself, kind of like playing a game!

Everything here seems to be based on the idea that no one would ever do anything productive unless they receive some incentive. So they came up with this thing called money. Such a funny idea, you exchange this money for other things and then they are yours until you decide to throw them away. Actually, money is the only way of getting access to anything around here, so I would say that in this planet, being successful is the same as having a lot of this thing, money. Remember that!

The fun part comes now, how to get this money thing. Well, you just have to convince someone else that they should give some of theirs to you! For example, you can learn how to make something, and then charge people for that! Or you could learn how to do some job, and have people pay you to do it for them. If for some reason you are not able to learn how to do anything, you can always do something even a machine could be doing at some factory! Lately they have been using more and more machines though, so maybe this option won’t be available… In this case, you can just get yourself some sort of weapon, and use it to convince people to give you their money; I heard this is highly effective! Anyways, no matter what you do, keep in mind that the spirit here is “Get more money, get more stuff!”

Of course, some ways of making money are more effective than others… For example, I heard that some people dedicate their lives to persuading others into paying lots of money for things they don’t actually need! How brilliant is that?! I’d put my money on that! Hahaha! Oh yeah, let me tell you, this thing of putting money is also very curious! Once you’ve got enough money by doing things which are useful to others, you can stop being productive and just lend money to others and ask them to pay more money back! No kidding, they do that!

Well, my friend, you might be wondering how to get started, right? It might seem difficult because I told you before that the whole idea of this incentive-based system is that everyone has to do something productive in order to deserve money. But that’s not how things really work. Most people are not doing anything useful or necessary, and they are getting money the same way! Besides the ones I told you before, who make money by persuading people, by lending them money, by doing the work which machines could be doing – all totally useless to the world – almost all the people in this planet are concentrating their efforts on doing something totally irrelevant. No wonder they still haven’t invented jet packs (oh yeah, I didn’t tell you, they haven’t…).

So how are all these people getting money? By making other people believe they are valuable, even if they aren’t! And that’s my recommendation to you, since it’s the way most people start. Some institutions can emit a paper that says you can do something, called license, degree... To get one of those, all you have to do is play by the rules of the institution for a few years, which usually mean you have to sit in a big room listening to a guy talking about things (they do have TVs, internet, but for some reason this counts more to them), then memorize a few patterns of questions, write the answers on a paper, and voila, you got your degree. I heard some people cheat, do special favors for the teacher, or even use money itself to buy a degree, so what I’m saying is, it doesn’t matter how much you actually know or what you can actually do, just be sure to get one of those for yourself.

These degrees are usually very specific, they say you can do some specific task; therefore, people will hardly give you their money for you to do something else. So be wise when choosing what to specialize in, because this will set the course of your life in this planet. Make sure it’s something very valuable to others, even if it’s not everything you’ve ever dreamed about spending your whole life doing. I would advise you though to do something you have a natural aptitude to; it tends to make things easier and people happier. Some people get indeed so happy, that they don’t even mind their tasks leaving almost no time for them to do the things they really like (they spend at least 5 out of 7 days working for others). Lucky are the few ones who manage to make money doing something they love, they are the ones who have been improving their science and society, and ironically, they are not doing it for the money.

Well, I think this is all I can tell you about succeeding, I’m sure you can find a lot more information on our public database about the world. I wish the best of luck to you in this trip, you will need it, since many people in this planet can't get enough money and live miserably.

Oh, and if all my advices fail, you could always find a rich person and convince them to share their money with you in exchange for sexual favors, I believe they call it “marry rich”.

Technology for freedom

2009-07-12T14:43:00.005+09:00

Freedom will be obtained step by step, but let's not allow our habits to slow the process.

I'm often asked how a free world can possibly come out of the one we have now. I think the first thing to be changed is our mentality, mainly through education and access to information. Not only for kids, of course. There’s no point on teaching kids at school to be good, honest, cooperative, etc, if what they see in the real world is competition, greed, selfishness. We, adults, have to open our minds to the future and be an example for our kids.

Technology will help us. There are projects we could be taking more seriously right now which will bring us closer to a better world for every one of us. They are still far from ideal, still moved by capitalist selfish reasons. However, embracing their potential to bring us equality and sustainability is what I believe will allow us to move on to the next steps towards total freedom. I’ll briefly discuss two of them now: urban farming and e-books. Both of them may contribute to free people from unnecessary mechanical labor, create an environmentally friendlier society and make way for the abundance which could allow us to be less competitive.

Urban farming

The video is self-explanatory. I can imagine the next step from there being a way of producing food 100% sustainable and independent from human labor. Once we have such a way of producing as much food as we want without taking anything from the environment and needing no human supervision, who would charge us for food?

E-books

I personally believe that physical books won’t be the ones responsible for the next generations’ education. It’s much easier and environmentally friendlier to give people access to virtual content. For some it might still be hard to imagine a world without paper books, but the truth is that the new generations are already getting used to it. Wikipedia and Google Book Search are only examples of how we are changing the way we look for information. With this virtual revolution, education and information are getting detached from money and power, they are becoming collaborative goods, belonging to all of us.

I see two barriers still to be overcome: the present economic structure and our mentality. What’s the problem of eating food which didn’t come from a traditional farm? What’s the problem of reading a book that is not made of paper?

God as the missing piece

2009-07-06T00:43:00.007+09:00

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. " Socrates

The concept of God is very broad and means different things to each person. However, in a way all believers share the idea of God as the explanation for the unexplainable – the missing piece. The basic difference is the size of the gap filled by God. For example, some believe God put all life in the universe at the same time some thousand years ago; others believe God acted little by little evolving one fossil to the next through millions of years; others think God just set the initial conditions so everything would happen the way he wanted, and so on… I think this God is becoming smaller and smaller as science advances, both to the fundamental religious and to the more critical, and I wonder how small he will eventually become.

Humans have always fit God as the cause of events we had no better explanation for. In the past, we used to think, for example, that God directly controlled the sun and the rain as he wished. Obviously, this simplistic answer wasn’t enough for us anymore; we eventually evolved to be better than that – we’ve become rational beings who are not satisfied with just any excuse. (Curiously, the ones who still don’t understand we’ve evolved from cave men still tend to reason like cave men.) Anyways, if God has left his post as the sun mover or the rain pourer, what is he doing now?

It varies from person to person. I’m not going to waste lines and lines here arguing with the people who still don’t believe in evolution, or that the universe is billions of years old, because facts such as these and the origin of life are already as certain as the origin of rain. I’m going to direct my thoughts to those who still see God as the cause of consciousness or feelings for example: things science still hasn’t fully explained and maybe never will.

Simply observing the trend of science clarifying more and more things with time is not enough for us to conclude everything will eventually be explained, but it certainly opens our mind. The same way our ancestors weren’t satisfied with the weather obeying God’s temper, I think modern men shouldn’t just accept God as an answer and give up on the search for truth. I know it’s a scary thought, imagine if we reach a point when science can predict exactly how electrons are moving inside our brains and exactly which decision we are going to make next – where would our free will go, can we just be reduced to a mechanical system like that? I don’t know… I’m not even sure if I’d like to know… All I know is that I won’t claim to know the truth – because I don’t, and no one does.

That’s the problem of recurring to God as the ultimate explanation: insisting that you know the truth when you most probably don’t. Since God is like a circular argument (it doesn’t matter how far you ask, you will always come back to God), you end up losing any reason to question at all. There’s no reason to look for the truth, because you already know the whole truth – you get trapped, you are not free. I know that the truth doesn’t really matter as long as you are happy – the only meaningful truth is the one inside us. But I think that while truth can be relative to a certain extent, freedom can’t. You might think you are free from other people’s influence, free to think by yourself, but if you don’t even question your belief in God, you are not. If you don’t question, you are close minded.

What is left for God to do, according to those who do look for the truth? First, I guess no one can really dismiss the idea of a creator (one who is not interested in human life at all) who set the initial conditions, because well, how could we find out? I just think this hypothesis is as probable as, for example, the universe coming out of a hamster’s butt. I won’t bias myself towards any side until some evidence comes up. So for me there’s really no point on just using God as the explanation for anything.

I’ve freed myself from God; I know that the missing piece is… missing! Some might get desperate with this idea: “I need to know, otherwise I’ll spend my life wondering!” I guess it depends then on how convincingly you can lie to yourself… For me, admitting I don’t know all the answers about the universe is not the same as being in a constant state of wonder, it’s more like recognizing how limited my point of view about the world is. There are things we might never know and not knowing is ok… It doesn’t take away the magic of life, it doesn’t make it meaningless – it sets you free to decide what your life is about.

Evolutionary excuses

2009-06-26T22:33:00.005+09:00

Evolution tells us how we got here, but it’s not an excuse for bad behaviors we’ve got used to.

Evolution explains that we are the way we are because we’ve inherited the characteristics which made our ancestors successful in living long enough to procreate (not that we need all of them nowadays…). This includes not only legs to run from predators, but also brains which tend to look for patterns, causes, etc. It’s all written in our genes, and scientists have been saying this explains much of our behavior. A lot of research is now trying to determine if the origin of certain behaviors is really part of our “human nature” or if they were put into us by society. What I want to discuss here, however, is not the causes behind some things we do, but to argue: can we suppress or enhance our impulses?

While it’s easy to understand why and how certain instincts would better be suppressed (and they are being), some of them are already so stuck into us and into how society has organized itself, that it’s difficult for us to have an objective point of view.

Why are some of our instincts being suppressed? Usually, because life in society becomes easier this way. How are they suppressed? Effectively, through an early-age education. Example: most people in modern societies have been educated according to the values of their societies, and they don’t have to fight daily against their natural impulses to kill, fornicate, take something that doesn’t belong to them, or poop on the streets. If someone ends up doing one of these things, we immediately associate it to a lack of moral values and bad education. Other instincts though, we still see as unchangeable human nature, and believe they will always be present; no matter how society changes, no matter how hard we try to teach kids: we will always be greedy, competitive, look down on others, label people, etc… “Because we’ve evolved this way.”

Personally, I believe it’s possible to pass on to kids basically any values. Just look at the various cultures around the world, and you will see that what is socially acceptable varies with where you are. While in Saudi Arabia stoning criminals to death in public is considered reasonable, in Japan just talking on the phone on the train is enough for you to disturb public peace. We are all humans, but our sense of what is right or wrong seems to be strongly connected to where we were raised. I’m not discarding the fact that some Saudi boy might grow up and decide to fight against the stoning system. And I admit that it’s not known yet if the kid managed to change his fate due to his own inner sense of what is right, or due to some enlightening experience in his life which made him question the traditions he grew up with. I just think that if people can become so different depending on where they grow up, this “we evolved to act like this” card shouldn’t be used as often as it is.

So, if we assume it’s possible to convince kids that being greedy, competitive and non-cooperative in life is bad, shouldn’t we do it? Shouldn’t we try to teach them these values besides the ones we’ve been already teaching, and be ourselves an example for them to follow? Do we really think we are creating a better place to live by teaching our kids to do whatever is needed to be the best, teaching them that in this world you can’t really trust anyone and that it is each man by himself? Why aren't we fighting for a world where using the “human nature” excuse for selfish capitalism is as bad as using it as an excuse for murder? Can’t we just grow up and stop playing life as a game?

I can already hear people asking: don’t you think this is a totalitarian attitude, just trying to brainwash kids into doing what you think is right? Why do you think every person in the world has to think exactly like you do? You talk about freedom but you don’t want to give kids the right to decide by themselves what’s right or wrong!

OK, let’s talk about freedom then. The freedom I’ve been promoting and that I honestly think is the ultimate human right is based on only two little things: tolerance and respect. And I have the impression that the moral values we agree upon today came from these two ideas. Don’t kill, don’t steal, blabla, don’t do to others what you don’t want done to yourself. That’s all I’m asking for, honest tolerance and respect. If our kids grow up in a society where people don’t just talk about equality, respect and being nice, but actually do it, maybe these kids will grow up to be nice people, at least nicer than all of us who claim to be good but still live by the laws of the jungle.

I just don’t know how educated people convince themselves that it’s bad if an uneducated man steals some food from the supermarket because he is hungry, but if a guy studies his whole life about how the laws work, how the economy works, how people choose what to spend money on, etc, in this case it’s perfectly ok to for him to use all his knowledge to take money from thousands of people! Hunger is no excuse, but greed, well, that’s just human nature...

BULLSHIT! You want to use evolution as an excuse, so at least be consistent! You want to punish people for taking what doesn’t belong to them but support the predatory economic structure we have now? I will ask again: can we just grow up and stop playing life as a game?

The Majority and Stereotypes

2009-06-16T22:58:00.009+09:00

Respecting diversity is more than being condescending; it's about recognizing a minority inside yourself.

Why am I so worried about majority? People already know minorities deserve respect, isn't that enough? No, not for me, not in the condescending way people usually do it. As in "I respect those people who like to dress like teddy bears, but I know I am more normal than them!" - suggesting those people are less normal - or abnormal. Many people "respect" others, but deep inside feel superior to them. Normal? Abnormal? Each person is the result of the unique combination of experiences lived by them so far! And I go further and say that even though some traces seem to be more common, it has nothing to do with normality or with what is actually inside each individual.

Is there any good coming from this need to separate "us and them", trying to classify people? I'm Muslim; I'm gay; I'm communist; I'm anarchist; I'm American; I'm Sagittarius; I'm a teddy bear... Why? Why is there this need to label people, to divide them into stereotyped groups? Celebrating diversity is not about dividing people into smaller and smaller groups - I believe it's about stopping this labeling completely! Stereotypes are already getting more specific: "I'm not just straight: I'm metrosexual". I think we will eventually reach a point where the stereotypes will get so narrow to the point of defining only one individual...

It doesn't even make sense to point out differences between two groups when there are huge differences within the group. "I'm catholic, but not like those who go to church and believe the Bible literally", "I'm a gay man, but the love of my life is a woman"... What's the meaning of "catholic", "gay"? The truth is that there is no meaning in reality - people use these terms as they like. Therefore, saying that "60% of this country's population is Buddist" is just talk, it means nothing real.

Majority? Someone might brag about being part of the largest growing religion in the world, but probably less than 0.00001% of the other adepts shares with them exactly the same opinion as to what the Quran is saying. Someone else might support the wining political party even though the only thing they agree on is that abortion should be forbidden. What's the point on talking about majority, minority, when groups are stereotyped and people differ so much? We live our lives trying to fit into these classifications when in reality people are unique.

I think that if we all truly embraced the fact that we are all completely different and that what might seem more "common" has nothing to do with what is more "normal", a lot would change. We would stop looking for absolutes. Laws would be kept to a minimum in order to fit diversity; Nation-states would have no reason to exist, since it makes no sense to divide the world into a finite number of groups and say everyone should join one of them; We wouldn't choose to be governed by other people anymore, because no one can be truly defending what's best for millions of people at the same time...

Try looking for who you really are... Does the word agnostic really express your spiritual views? Is the party you voted for really fighting for what you believe to be the best? Are you really as straight as all the other heterosexuals? Or are you just... you?

Zeitgeist: Addendum - a movie about freedom

2009-06-12T12:12:00.006+09:00

Everything I've been trying to say... and more!

I watched Zeitgeist: Addendum last night. Have no idea how this movie has been out there for months and I hadn't heard about it. Watching it gave me a strange feeling: for the first time I felt like I'm not alone with my "crazy" ideas. (People I talk to never agree with me about anything and tend to make me feel like I'm the weird one... =P)

The movie talks about being free exactly the way I see it:
Freedom from laws, governments, money, media, religion, capitalism, materialism... Real and pure freedom!

For me, it's a much more relevant movie than the first Zeitgeist (the movie), which attacked particular things in the US. Addendum starts unveiling the process by which money is made in the States, but its message is universal. It's about a better world for e-v-e-r-y one of us.

Even the solution proposed for all our social problems is the one I have always been speaking about: education for a change in mentality: for a profound change in the way we all think about human relationships. For those who were bothered by me implying that today's social scientists are not really thinking about a complete change in the system: watch the movie and ask yourself if you ever thought about solving the real root of the problem. (I got all happy inside when the little "social engineer" appeared =P)

I was also glad when they talked about the real purpose of technology and how it is supposed to help everyone - not to create differences and competition. And if we concentrate on doing science the right way, the whole humanity will benefit from it.

Is the world proposed in the movie impossible? Just a dream of perfection? The movie makes it clear that there's no such think as perfection, and that utopia (the day when all social problems will be completely solved) will never be reached due to constant change in... zeitgeist. What the movie offers is an option of how to make things a million times better than they are now. Which, in my opinion, will happen sooner or later anyways, as we achieve progress. The question is how fast is it going to come.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the movie, so please watch it and leave a comment ^^

Zeitgeist: Addendum

Advertising

2009-06-08T19:49:00.012+09:00

The science of deceit.

I remember once during history class, when the teacher was talking about when the colonizers first came to Brasil and brought a lot of things from Europe to trade with the natives. The natives were amazed: there were clothes, mirrors and.... skis! Yes, skis were exchanged for things the locals had, like food and medicine. Imagine what would those poor guys do with skis, considering they didn't even know what snow was! I don't even know if this is a true story, were there skis at that time? But I think this has been stuck into my head until today because I was shocked by how human beings are able to take advantage of other people's innocence just like that.

Centuries have passed and now there's a whole science devoted to finding ways of increasing people's desire for things they don't need: advertising. Watching TV, surfing the internet, even walking on the street makes us an easy target for advertisements. It is already so tightly connected to our daily lives that we don't really have the chance to stop, look at it and say "This is so mean!"

The evil techniques are numerous and ingenious. Think for example about the trick of offering two products which are actually the same, but with different names, and more importantly, different prices. Some people will feel very smart for buying the cheap one, and others will crave the expensive one - just because it's expensive. How have we become such easy preys? Well, I'm not sure we can just blame it all on our ingenuity. I mean, these people study psychology; they make pools and trials with real people in order to understand how we choose what we buy, and then use it on us. They attack us inside our heads! Of course it gets difficult for us to see how we are being used. So evil!

I'm not completely against advertisement in the system we live in today though. Thanks to it we have free TV, free web sites... I personally think we should also get free transportation, considering the absurd amount of ads inside trains (at least in Japan). I just think it should be more about showing us the different things there are out there rather than a game of seducing customers, with no respect for our decision making process.

I think the advertising industry is a terrifying example of the selfish zeitgeist we have now. Few people stop to think about how horrible ads are, we just accept them and enter the game. We consider working at an add company - looking for ways of tricking people into spending money - a job like any other. In a time when we should have already realized cooperation is better for everyone, our mind is still set into these primitive competition games where using people is ok.

I think we can only aspire to have a nice free world when this kind of mentality is changed to something healthier and more respectful.

I would go to hell

2009-06-05T11:04:00.006+09:00

My first reasons for not believing in religion or God

I was raised catholic, did everything the tradition says: first communion, first confession... I even wanted to get my confirmation, but my parents told me to get it only when got old enough to really know what I was doing, after all I was 8 at the time. Well, it happened that things never really got "confirmed" to me. I've been trying to look back and trace the path I took to get where I am now, and I came up with 4 main reasons that made me, still as a kid, proclaim myself agnostic and eventually atheist.

After I got my first communion, I never really got back to church. I used to see God as this loving thing, which would eventually judge us at the end, just not too harshly because he was aware of the difficulties of life and was forgiving. So in my mind, God - the omniscient - was constantly watching me, therefore he knew that deep in my heart I was a good girl who always did good things to others. If being good was the goal, going to church wasn't necessary, since God can see all. Well, I obviously didn't understand anything I learned at Sunday school, because I didn't know that religion isn't about being good - it's about praying. I could be as good as I wanted, I'd still go to hell if I didn't do everything the church says.

Another thing that constantly bothered me was the possibility of being born in another country. If I had been born in Saudi Arabia, I'd be Muslim; in India, I'd be Hindu, and so on... So what did this say about the great power of God? Why didn't He teach us all how to get to him on the same way? Why did He have to appear to different people, say different things, and then cause them to fight over it? It became clear to me that religion was something invented by people, more connected to the place where you are born than to the actual truth about life.

I guess the simplest reason why I even started questioning God was the simple fact that the things we ask for are not granted. Simple as that. It's not even possible to grant everyone what they want... Before a football match in Brasil both teams pray before the game, but usually only one wins. If there was a way to count the faith of all the people cheering for each team, I'm not sure it would prove that the one with more prayers always wins. And if it did, soccer players would rather spend time negotiating their victory with God then actually practicing. The whole match wouldn't be necessary anymore, just put a bunch of people praying on each side! Another thing which has always bothered me is that in most places, poor people tend to be more religious: they are also the ones going through more difficulties in life... Note this is what I used to think years ago, now I understand they are more religious exactly for the fact they need more hope. My reasoning was: if this whole thing of God granting wishes actually worked, I would expect the religious people to be better-off, not in the material sense, but in all senses, no?

What has always really bothered me, and made me enter long discussions, is that some people don't understand they are in the middle of history: they tend to see the present as the end of history, when everything got solved. I'm saying that because every time I ask if they are not ashamed about all the bad things the catholic church has done throughout history, killing people, stalling science, etc., they always say "oh yeah, the church was bad in the past, but this has nothing to do with God, or with the church I follow now." I can see people in 20 years from now saying "oh yeah, the church used to be against stem cell research, tell people not to use condoms in Africa, but now...” When is it going to stop?

My last point is not counted as a reason why I stopped believing in God, but I'd like to add it here because I find it funny. I remember that since I first learned at school about how life started in the primordial soup, with some amino acids eventually giving origin to life, every time someone would ask me "Do you believe in God?", I'd reply "I believe in the amino acids!". I wonder what I meant by this back then, because I didn't understand much about it, and the idea of evolution hadn't convinced me until years later. Still, maybe it was the origin of my questioning? Hum... I was probably just trying to annoy people =P

Just to finish, when you people comment, keep in mind this post is about my point of view as a kid ^^

Prostitution...

2009-05-31T21:51:00.014+09:00

... or sex therapy, however is good for you.

I had already talked about the origins of our naughty bits in Why are we here?, but just to situate everyone: We have genitals because we were made as a copy of our parents. If our parents hadn't had them, we couldn't have been made. The same way, among our ancestors, the people who had more sexual pleasure were the ones who tended to reproduced more, and we, as the product of it, have great pleasure when stimulated on the right spot.

Sex is not the only stimulation that makes us feel good. We watch movies, listen to music, eat fancy food, wear perfume, receive massages... We are constantly stimulating our body through our senses. And even though sexual stimulation is for most people the best physical feeling they can expect to have, we are not allowed to pay for it. Differently from every other stimulation we can receive, sexual stimulation is the one we have to receive for free. Why?

Back in the old days, when people started realizing babies were a result of sex, the dictators of morality of the time, worried about the well being of newborns, decided that it would be better for babies to be made inside a family. From that came the idea of monogamy, that sex out of marriage was bad, and that fornicating, as pleasurable as it might feel, was something to be avoided if you were not willing to bear a baby.

Since then, the development of science and medicine has clarified for us much of the baby-making process and human anatomy in general. What we learned was that babies are made when a sperm reaches an egg. It means that the good feeling you have when making a baby is not what brings it to the world. In fact, it's possible to have pleasure without making a baby, and it's possible to make babies without pleasure as well.

Unlike other discoveries about our anatomy, however, we found out sexual stimulation was not that different from other ways of entertainment a bit too late. Books which claimed to preach morals had already included big criticisms to sex. These same books preached tradition and obedience, so people really got stuck to old ideas about how the act of having sex was something purely bad. Sexual pleasure became something to be avoided in the name of a good society. People's mentality had already been changed, laws had been made: sex that doesn't make babies is wrong.

In the middle of all this, what happened to prostitution, said to be the oldest profession in the world? The sex business was thrown to the margin of society: if you want pleasure, or want to offer pleasure, you are doing no good to others - you are actually very bad and deserve no rights! Governments, laws, science, medicine... Everyone turned their back to sex, turning it into an underground business, which people join out of desperation and need, opening space for opportunists to take advantage of others.

Problems related to prostitution nowadays are things like diseases, the lack of opportunity for those doing it, the sexual exploration of unfortunate women by pimps, etc... But these problems are not here because sexual services are intrinsically bad - they are here because our mentality throughout history has made things turn out this way. The problem with prostitution, legal or illegal, comes from inside the head of each one of us, from the old notion that sexual pleasure is inherently bad. If we change that, I believe there's enough space in the world for people to enjoy the pleasures of prostitution, or maybe should we call it sex therapy?

The same way you go to a doctor, tell him what afflicts you, and after he decides what to do, you sign a paper saying "I am aware there's a 10% chance I might die during this surgery, but I'd like to try the procedure anyways", why can't you go to a sex therapy clinic、explain the specialist what you want, and sign a paper saying "I am aware there's a 0.01% chance I might contract AIDS, but I am willing to deal with the consequences."? If people know what they are getting into, let them be! The same goes if someone, after being given all the options, decides to work offering sex to others, maybe after studying some techniques, let them do it!

Many people worry about what might happen to love if we start to see sex as an entertainment like any other. I think love you be fine. The existence of restaurants hasn't taken away the special feeling we have when cooking for someone we love. Elaborated perfumes didn't transform us into perfume-bottle-sniffers, we still want to smell it on the ones we love. The same way, those who have had sex with someone they loved and with someone they didn't love know the difference, and it's up to them to choose who to do it with from now on. It's up to them to decide if they want to charge for it, or if they want to pay for it.

Certain jobs are considered shameful only because of our own mentality, and mentality can be changed!

Rubbish telling us what to do

2009-05-28T12:13:00.009+09:00

Assuring some jobs…

I remember having the following conversation a few times with my little friends when I was a kid: “What will happen if we don’t throw garbage on the floor? The people who work collecting garbage from the floor will lose their jobs!” That’s the impeccable logic of young minds… The thing is that it could make sense even in adult logic. In poor countries where people don’t have access to education, and unemployment is a big issue, cleaning the streets might be the only way a person can make a living. And it’s important to society as a whole that these people have an honest way of making money.

I’m not saying people thrown trash on the floor having this in mind. Not even saying they should! I’m just saying that, from the point of view of the guys cleaning the streets, if we don’t litter, many of them will lose their jobs.

Ok, what about lawyers? I’m not going to say “if we all respected laws…” because I know I would be bombarded by people saying “it’s not like that, laws are not always clear, don’t include all the cases, blablabla, we need lawyers”. Also, I’m not a big fan of laws myself, so I won’t even propose it.

Where I want to get with this is that, yes, whatever, some laws can be convenient to us. But you know who they are very convenient to? To lawyers! And to all the other people who work daily with them. The same way garbage is assuring some jobs, laws are assuring many others. Am I saying law is rubbish? Well, yeah, most of it is, and not only the obviously silly ones.

What happens is that the law is very different from general rubbish. First, the people dealing with it daily spent years and a lot of effort on getting ready for the job, and receive money accordingly. Second, it’s very easy for everyone to see why rubbish would be bad for us directly, but with law it’s more complicated. And I go even further and say that it’s more complicated exactly because the people dealing with it are very clever.

Wouldn’t it be easier for the common people if the law were much simpler than it is now? Let’s say: don’t kill, don’t steal, and a couple of others telling you to mind your own business. We wouldn’t need that many lawyers today.

What we got instead of the simplicity of common sense are so many little rules that the common citizen doesn't even know what's illegal anymore. The law is not even made for society anymore, it's just "the lawyers' own professional code". Lawyers are needed mostly because laws are made in a way common people can't really understand them. And funny enough, their job is to find a hole in the law proportional to the amount of money they are getting.

Imagine if one day all the people who sit down together in their suits to make new laws looked at the constitution (or whatever they call their little book of laws) and said "Aha! It's complete! That's what we had been working for all this time! It's done! So now... what can we do?"

I'm not saying that laws should reach a point and be blindly followed from there, because society's needs are in constant change. All I'm saying is that this whole legislation system has gone a bit too far and overloaded us with a bunch of crap, just for some people to show they are doing their high-paying jobs. (And to assure they remain being highly paid.) We just put up with it because the whole system makes it way too complicated for us to try to change it.

The system's got to be entirely changed!

If you wonder what I'm talking about, just type in "silly laws" on google and check it out. Ask yourself how much of your money is going to the great minds who thought of these things, and to the people working to "defend the law".

A little about God

2009-05-26T12:10:00.011+09:00

A discussion between two serious adults about the existence of God is solved with a single-word argument: Santa-Claus.
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I was going to post just the previous sentence, for me it's enough, but I know many people won't get it, so I decided to make some points about the similarities between God and Santa:

#You respect the people who put these ideas in your head.
-Kids believe in Santa because someone who they respect, probably their parents, told them he is real. These are the same people who told them not to touch fire and to look both ways before crossing the road. They grow up feeling that their parents are always right.
-The same way, people hear about God. But in this case there are more "respectable" people repeating the idea. Besides family, preachers are the ones telling you to respect others, not to kill...

#These ideas tend to stay in innocent minds. The idea of a super-force doing nice things for us is comforting if we don't know better.
-Kids don't have a good idea about how the world works yet, they don't know where presents come from... They don't know about capitalism...
-Like that, some religious people seem not to know where we came from and why we are here... They don't know science yet...

#These ideas are convenient for the people spreading them around.
-Santa is a practical way of telling kids "Behave or you won't get any presents!". Parents are well rewarded when kids fall for it.
-God is a way of telling people "Behave or you will burn in hell!". It does keep some people on track... Note that I'm not saying that all the powerful people who praise God are conscious of his non-existence. Some of them can be seen as kids telling each other about Santa.

#If there is a possibility of finding out the truth about them, people try to ignore it.
-There are many kids who know Santa doesn't exist, but they pretend to their parents they still do just to get presents. They got the idea, they will still behave, but now they know where the present is coming from. They might still tell their younger brother Santa is real, just to keep him on track.
-Adults went to school, learnt a lot of things about the world, and started to wonder if there really is a God. Some of them like to spread the idea around just because "other people wouldn't know better, therefore it's nice that this idea is out there", some of them are just scared of being left alone, like a kid scared of not getting any more presents, and prefer not to think about it.

I'm going to stop on these 4 points, because my posts have been too long so far... Actually, I think I could write a whole book on this topic, but I will hold myself for now... Just hope this leads to a nice discussion.

One last thing. I know some people will come and say "I don't believe in this punitive God, I know religion was made by people with their own interests... But I do believe in a force moving the world!". Well, I don't completely share your beliefs, but if you stop calling this force God, which for me sounds too personified, and call it Nature, then we can start to talk.

When people realize God doesn't exist, they are free to enjoy the amazing possibilities there are in life.

Politics with tolerance?

2009-05-21T12:20:00.025+09:00

The endless fight...

Since the oldest civilizations, power had been concentrated in the hands of a few, while most human beings were subject to the will of others. No one had thought about making it better for everyone until the Greek came along with a new concept: democracy. Democracy was promising, it stated that everyone deserved a chance to defend their opinions, and all voices were counted equally. It was a great progress.

Nowadays, most of the world has embraced democracy. It means that most people in the world consider other people's opinions as important as their own, and are willing to listen, and debate, and reach a common sense. Hmm, really? Actually, what we got instead is people trying to convince each other and not allowing themselves to be convinced.

One of the basic concepts in democracy is that the majority rules. Well, in a world where every one's opinions are counted as the same, it seems very fair. Imagine, five people want to watch a movie, and there's only one TV. Three want to watch movie A and two want movie B. It is clear what is the right thing to do. But the question is, what about the two people who are going to watch something they didn't want to? In this friendly environment, the most common solution is tolerance. "Fine, let's watch movie A, but if it sucks, we get to choose next time!". Another option is not to be tolerant, but to respect the decision and just leave, go do something else while the 3 people watch their movie. And the more complicated thing to do is to go buy a new TV and everyone can be satisfied at the same time.

Based on the TV problem, there seems to be 3 types of solutions to disagreements. Tolerance, respect or parallel action. Parallel action seems to make more people happy, but unfortunately most times the resources are limited. So we are left with two successful ways of solving any disagreements: to be tolerant, recognizing that different people have different opinions and that maybe someone else's ideas might be just what you are looking for; or to be respectful, again recognizing differences, even though there's no way you would share that opinion, and let the others do whatever they want in peace.

Of course, this is just a silly example, a movie is not such a big deal. But what if those three people were against prostitution, for example? With this kind of problem, the majority's opinion is (for some reason...?!) imposed on the minority, and no one is allowed to escape. That's called the "tyranny of the majority".

We have to understand that both the movie problem and the prostitution one are based on opinion. "I think movie A sounds more interesting, I think prostituting myself is not a good way to live". The great difference is that prostitution can be solved by parallel action: there's no way movie A and B could be on at the same time on one TV, but it's perfectly possible for 2 people to appreciate prostitution while 3 don't. It makes you wonder why those 3 people are even trying to impose their opinion on others, in an issue that doesn't even affect them directly. Unfortunately, that's what the majority has been doing, being intolerant to the point of impeding parallel action.

One could argue that democracy nowadays is not so black and white, and that there are ways of making the minorities be heard, so that by expressing their ideas, they can persuade the majority into accepting them. Also, that in secular states, decisions are made based not on mere opinions, but in facts. So that's what politics are about: many groups discussing, presenting their "facts", and trying to find a single solution which will benefit everyone.

The first problem with this whole political process is: what happens if a group can't convince the other, and neither wants to give in, both stuck with their "facts"? This seems to take us to an endless discussion where people are continually trying to convince each other. And since in a democracy the more people you have on your side, the better, politics have become a dirty game where everything is allowed in order to get more people to your side. People actually study these things, how to get others to go along with your ideas, how to twist the truth in your favor... It's nasty, it's messy, and it's not solving any problems, only creating more.

The second problem is: is there really a way of everyone benefiting from a single solution? Is there an "absolute truth", an "absolute good"? I mean, if we are talking about everyone benefiting from the same solution (the constitution is indeed only one), you would expect this solution to be perfect, right? Because, if this solution is only half as good to all the groups as their own specific solution would be, they will not be content with it. You can't say "let's watch half of movie A and half of movie B" and expect everyone to be happy. All five people will want to watch a full movie.

I say: everyone, let's be free! The only thing resembling a rule in this "being free" thing is recognizing that everyone else is as free as you, and that your freedom ends where theirs starts. From this simple concept, comes the tolerance and respect necessary to solve any discussion. If you recognize other people are just as free as you, you tolerate what they do, because you know they tolerate what you do. The same way, you respect what they do. It's a simple live-and-let-live philosophy, which makes everyone happier.

Politics have taken away our capacity to be tolerant, and made us think we can only be happy if we impose our opinions at any costs, because this makes us feel powerful. And we do it using all the tools available, be it democracy, be it anything else. Wanting power is directly opposed to the basic principle of being free, and in the end, doesn't make anyone happier, not even the powerful.

Why are we here?

2009-05-18T11:17:00.006+09:00

Starting from the beginning...

The world started some zillion years ago. Those were pretty intense times, with bizarre temperatures, pressures and forces. There were various chemical reactions happening everywhere, creating random blobs of matter. Under these exceptional conditions, some of the blobs would react by creating exact copies of themsevs. And since the resulting copies were exactly the same as the original blob, they too ended up copying themselves continually. Inevitably, some copying mistakes would happen every other generation, and different types of copying bits came out.

Along the process, the raw product used in the production of new copies eventually became scarce, and the only way it would be possible for new copies to be made was by using the material that had once belonged to other replicating blobs. But how would this material be available? Well, surely some blobs would break down due to the harsh conditions they were submitted to, whether by the environment, whether by other blobs. Ha? Wait! How would other blobs be able to threat something outside them?! Aren't they just replicating things? Yes, replicating is one thing they do, but the bits which they are made from might as well activate other kinds of reactions at the same time. Maybe they produce some substance that happens to disintegrate others; maybe they produce some external layer resistant to temperature changes. They could do basically anything, depending only on what bits they are made of. Some of them were able to exist long enough to make lots of copies; others disappeared as soon as they were formed; and maybe, some of them were there for a long time, but didn't manage to make any copies.

After lots of time, lots of copies, and lots of mistakes, some more stable patterns tended to be more numerous. Patterns came out and disappeared, and along the process, only some were apt to copy successfully. This adaptation process continued for another zillion years, and in the long run, the bits had built huge vehicles which protected them from the outside world, but still, allowing them to replicate. Moreover, every time a new copy would be made, a whole new vehicle would come up with it, and if the copy was faithful, so the vehicle would be. I’m talking about elephant sex! Each elephant is a vehicle for the tiny genes inside it, and when it has sex, what comes out of it is another vehicle that carries genes. The new elephant is not exactly the same as its parents, but it does carry a big portion of their genes.

A lot happened in a zillion years, and the replicating process became complex, more to some than to others. Flowers, bacteria, insects... All replicating beings are different vehicles for similar bits, the DNA. The reason they exist today is the fact that their ancestors succeeded in reproducing. Since they are very similar copies of their ancestors, they also carry the characteristics which helped them reproduce. You have reproductive organs because you came from your parents, who also had them. If they hadn't, you wouldn't be here to wonder what your naughty bits are for.

So, that's how we got here, and that's why we look like this. Are we the final product of this process? Well, why would we? We are not even the only product in the world at this moment. For sure we are the most complex and intriguing thing that has ever come up, but the truth is that something even more improbable will be here, given enough time. But what is so impressive about human beings like you, me, the Chinese and the Pope, is that we are vehicles complex to the point of questioning all this complexity!

So, these are the basics of evolution, but why am I talking about it here?

From above, we understand that we are just the result of zillions of years of chemical reactions. That's what we are. We weren't made with a specific purpose, we just happened to appear in the Universe. Therefore, our life is the only opportunity we have to be in this world, and we should live it to the full. There's no contract with the world saying there is something we should be doing. We are free.