Intrinsically Good

Thinking that us humans are intrinsically good is naive, to say the least. A naivety that is OK for a 5, maybe a 10 year old, but not for an adult.

The dismemberment of live children in the womb, the selling of body parts of these children, child pornography, child sex slavery are just a few important examples of human's nature when left stranded and falsely justified.

The one thing to know to become an adult is that we all humans have a fallen nature. A  nature that needs redemption and guidance in order to strive (ache!) to always choose virtue over vice, in every size or kind, and to repent and ask for forgiveness whenever we fail to do so, and start all over. This is why we admire humans who made their best to live this way, each on their own time and the challenges then... most of the saints.

Redemption is Christ. Not only because He paid the price, but because He shows us the way.

Wanna Gain Superpowers?

Relationships. I'd like to ask Professor X about them (rather than asking Dr. Phil, for example). Maybe cause I'd really like to know how real, mutant, out-of-this-world superheroes would usually solve their romantic disputes and ask for forgiveness for their un-human mistakes. Would they say "I'm sorry, I'm a mutant", "Is not you, its my planet"? Or maybe for those from this world, made by especial circumstances, an "I'm sorry honey, I was bitten by the wrong spider" would suffice.

The thing is, when it comes to relationships, I'd wish we could all develop the healthy habit (actual superpower) of cutting the crap up just once in a while. Of course! There oughta be romance, oh God LET there be SOME mistery, but c'mon, we're humans... We (both genders) have our ways of screwing up and people, we're gonna DO it. We women will cry for no reason, you dudes will say (or do) insensitive stuff that will makes us cry while you'll frustratingly think we're crying for no reason, then you'll try to make it up and, since you have noooo idea of what happened (even when you asked xD) you could get a tender reaction from us until we get it and we get all bitchy at your throats for not knowing what you did XD Yeah, seriously girls, shouldn't we learn from 100th time it happens? Take the flowers, go straight to "making up" X> xD. Then, from our justified (maybe not) bitchiness, you'll throw another justified (maybe not), non-curve, insensitive ball at us repeating the crying, bitching, insensitive cycle ... and so on.

As it turns out, not only girls would cry and not only guys would say insensitive things. But we're pretty much victims of our own social stereotypes and judgments. And, we quickly tend to forget that though we are, metaphorically, from different "emotional" planets, we're from this very same world. We express ourselves differently, but we're pretty much made from the same material. Moreover, we both developed from this one, Transformers-like (that sadly, would only espontaneusly transform once, according to the chromosomes info it has within reach), incredible design.

So girls, guys don't quite get us most of the time. And let's face it dammit, who does?! Sometimes we don't even get ourselves. I swear there were times when if I had gotten flowers for myself in order to cheer me up, I would've shoved them up my own... flower vase. Guys, you not getting us does not mean we're crazy. We're a freaking hormones playground! On top of that, we're brought up to be CARING and SENSITIVE mothers, sisters, friends, girlfriends, wifes... oh well. It's like you inquisitors would assing anything you don't understand or that you do not see clearly through, to the forces of evil, burning every witch who cries for no reason in a big-ass bonefire.

And I'm addressing just an itty bitty portion of what our differences could mean in a relationship within which no one remembers we're humans and heavier yet, no one remembers that some of us are women, some others are men. And WE'RE ALL different. In our human condition, relationships will always enclose challenges. I can't really know if gay relationships work better since the gender condition is the same, but there's still the same old human issues. Even as all items of the same specie (without considering gender characteristics), WE'RE DIFFERENT. We won't see eye to eye on eeeeevery single thing. But if we did, where's the fun in that? 8>

Let's stop idealizing and let's love each other for exactly who we are. I'm not saying stop evolving, I'm not saying stop trying to be better, this is not base for the typical "just love me for who I am, take it or leave it". This is a "let's live here on Earth, know and love (in every detail) the wonderful, complex race that pretty much every freaking 'real' superhero devotes his life to protecting". Yeah that's right, us. Looking back from where I stand, I can tell who I really loved from remembering, in great detail, their goofy and more annoying "defects" with a chuckle and realizing that, knowing those weird, awkward, characterizing features, made me fall even harder in love :J In a different kind of love vibe, this is comparable to what I felt with my sister when, the day after a really funny set of events on a night of tequila celebration (xD!), we cracked each other up laughing about the weirdest features of ourselves we did not know one had noticed about the other XD I mean, peculiar shit that you would swear no living soul knows about you or even cares to notice. Not only you're not the only one with this kind of "dark side" (though I don't mean evil, I just mean odd), but the people who really loves you the most, cares to notice, notices and loves you with and for it :)

So DO WE need superpowers? Mind reading, X-ray vision, exciting transportation methods, super hearing... Nah. What we really need is patience, the capacity of seeing ourselves and each other as who/what we are, and loving based on reality, on humanity. If you screw up and you think is worth it, find your way back, if you love your significant other (and you're loved back), you'll know the way of finding out how. Otherwise, you'll just find your way of moving on.

But if you guys are still looking for superpowers, brake up with your girlfriends. It doesn't matter how much of an asshole you've been with them or how much of a good-for-nothing she made you feel while she was with you, as soon as you brake it up, she'll turn you into (well, unless you're divorcing... x> xD) freaking Captain America. The good news girls, it doesn't take us much to realize, that sometimes, we act GENUINELY crazy. xD

"Make tea, not war."

Happier Iron Man Chronicals :)

Ohhhoo yeeeeahh! I saw it! I saw it and I made it unharmed x) Sorry to report that sweet Caroleee x] Then again, I went to Cines Unidos :P I never saw the day I would cheer for Cines Unidos over Cinex would come :/

Anyways, some thoughts about this grrrrrreat product of film making:
1) The only dude I like more than Robert Downey Jr., is Tony Stark xD
2) If Iron Man cannot really handle "Pepper" Potts... dudes, give it up! We women ARE in charge.
3) Boooyy! Would-I-like-to-get my ass... kicked (oooh no you didn't! xD) by Natasha Romanoff on the red-haired Scarlett Johansson persona! O.O xD
(And WwwwTF martial art was that? It looks like fatal pole dancing. And darn right I wanna learn it!)
3) And ohhh iies, allowing myself to insert some venezuelan creole flavor here: "Aunque el mono explotado se vea, malbañado se queda" (although he nailed it, Mickey Rourke will always be Mickey Rourke xP)
4) And once again: '<'venezuelan'>' Caaaaarajo en esta tampoco me pusieron la canción??? Será que se la reservan para la tercera??? '<'/'venezuelan'>'

The cherry on the top, before the marvelous closing of a great evening with THE BEATLES ROCKBAND...!!!!! (Aaaaaggghhhhhh!! Ieeeeeeeeeeeehhhgg!!!!! *Crowd screaming* :D), my comment to my Iron Man 2 adventure accomplice and his perfect comeback:

'<'venezuelan (love this tagging thing x> Although Blogger takes HTML too literal :P :D)'>'

"Coye con ese 'candado' (barba) te pareces a Tony Stark!"
"Nooooooo, me falta mucha plata"

'<'/'venezuelan'>'

xDDD!... A great, top notch, "mind unlocking" evening :) Thank youuuu!

Looking forward to the next beatle-jamming session :D Ohhhhhhgg! DO YOU KNOW THERE'S A GREEN DAY ROCKBAND COMING??? OH DUUUUDE! :D

The Marvelous Side of Atrocious Things... (If there is any).

How does one reaches enlightment? By connecting the dots? By looking only at the bright side of things or looking mostly their darker side? How about looking it all as a whole and trying to remember the connections? Just remembering the connections. Understanding them, maybe an impossible task. Humans are complex and as wonderful as potentially atrocious beings.

Sometimes, where beatiful things flower, there once was garbage or death as a fertilizer.

Take for example, a marvelous display of one of a kind types of stars like the ones over the stage of the, again, one of a kind Concert for Bangladesh, in 1971. Now read about the Bangladesh Liberation War, all inconceivable violence towards Bengalis, man, children, elderly... oh, the women. Now consider that before this war, a more discrete, less scaled witch-hunt was carried on against Biharis, who later allied with West Pakistani forces and then started de "1971 Bangladesh atrocities".

Then read about the Armenian Genocide (early in the past century, almost parallel to WW I), then WW II, and then the Balkan Wars (Serbs, Croats, Bosnians teaming an double teaming ALL against each other), Rwanda... Do you really think genocide is a recent original idea? Eventually you can get to the point of recognizing the pattern.

So "Remember, remember...".

Earth Hour - Earth Hour 2010 Global Site – It’s Show Time!

Earth Hour - Earth Hour 2010 Global Site – It’s Show Time!

A constructivist step away from the first world

Whenever knowledge is perceived in terms of power and the need to “defeat” overcomes the will of learning, of teaching and innovating through the making of contributions that will at last construct, any intellectual exchange will be drastically limited. And the seriousness of this scenario is not the limitation of the exchange per se, but the fact that the futility of this trading becomes noticible when it's obvious that the only useful thing that can be taken from it (and will only be taken by an intellectual, if involved), is the knowledge of with whom trying to engage in an intellectual swapping would be a total waste of time.

An interlocutor (which we will not define as rival, comrad or pupil), always provides us with a learning opportunity, either by bringing something we did not know about, bringing something we knew about conceived from a different perspective, by asking something that could make us question a before unquestioned matter (initiating a new learning and discovery process) or by making us review information and strengthen our own knowledge the moment we come up with an answer that would dissipate the question itself.

When the knowledge interchange is based on a power struggle, on the quest for the victorious and the defeated, once the real knowledge runs out, musings and ramblings begin to emerge with no other end than reinforce the illusion of knowing more than what one knows for sure, causing the rival's confusion in order for them to admit (the rival or the audience) the opponent's defeat. Before ramblings began, the few or many wise thoughts that could have featured along this battle of monologues, not only do not go anywhere but, best case scenario, they stay exactly where they came out from (lying within whom already “owned” them) and exactly as they were, remaining untransformed. They will not extend, they will not evolve, they will not spread, they will not CONSTRUCT. In this terms, knowledge, as a general concept, turns out to be less than useless. Even debates, in which the background can be interpreted as a struggle, if held between real intellectuals with a constructive purpose, the exchange is established in a way that, though each participant can maintain their position, each can also enrich their own perspective based on the contender's, preserving all respect and admiration for the opponent, the disposition to receive and transmit, the freedom to agree or disagree and the satisfaction of learning/teaching.

It would be important then to signalize who have we been calling intellectuals throughout these lines. A highly retentive, deeply analitic, creatively unlimited mind, just won't do it. The love for knowledge itself and its evolving potential to transform and create in a powerful recursive way, is key… the admiration for knowledge's own life, more than the fascination of owning it and using it against our peers.

“First world minds”, which I don't intend to define by the country they're living in but for the potential they have to bring ANY country to the first world, are intellectual minds. Brilliant, constructive, respectful (and even enthusiasts) of opposing views and debates; minds giving ideas with mere passion for watching them transform and grow together with different ideas, that eventually will become a form of wisdom that will be spread throughout time and generations increasing its creating and innovating capacity as historical, social and technological contexts change. Minds transforming ideas in realities that develop further with more ideas (either of their own or shared).

So static, cornered wisdom will eventually (and at considerable speed), become obsolete in the face of products arising from the knowledge networks intellectuals build. Then the key would be orienting knowledge to the conformation of wisdom based on the knowledge of a whole community (with a dosage of altruism, espirituality and profound intellect). Wisdom constructed on the foundations of preexistant cells that associate with new cells (or not so new but just brought to the construction context) to create structures increasingly powerful themselves (enphatically pointing out the power of the created structures more than the power of those credited for creating them); structures capable of benefit in various ways the whole community that contributed to their creation a even trascending the frontiers of just this community benefiting more and more of us. Structures that will also enable (and catalyze) new constructions and further evolving learning processes.

It would then make sense to think, that in this era of rapid and radical changes, where 40 exabytes (4x10¹⁹) of new information are generated each year and it is presumed that in less than five years computers will exceed the computing capacity of our own brains, this is the ideal way of creating or CONSTRUCTING; verb that has been intentionally emphasized along these lines linking the intellectual exchange with the foundations of a world where there's no way that just a few of us can master all existent knowledge, not casually exalting the concept of “constructivism“. Constructive vs. destructive in a positive vs. negative sense, as in the terms “constructive criticism” and “destructive criticism”… Products resulting from this constructive proposal would not only evolve with increasing rapidity, but they would also be of a quality hardly surmountable by products derived from knowledge structures authored by just a few minds. Highly gifted, brilliant minds for sure, and maybe aided by more robust investigation and development methodologies, but minds at last less altruistic and oriented towards making knowledge a property.