Thursday, December 29, 2011

Tame the world



[...]
What does that mean "tame"?
-It is an act too often neglected, said the fox. It means "to establish ties".
-To establish ties?
-Just that, said the fox. To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world...
-I am beginning to understand, -said the little prince-. There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me...
[...]
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

During this year ending, millions of human beings who suffer and die, innocent victims of an unjust system that excludes them, evicts them, denies them their opportunities, ignores them, condemns them to starvation, that restricts freedoms, that cuts their fundamental rights...

All of them are "flowers" that have tamed me.

Hopefully next year us to be millions who are determined to tame the world and being tamed by it. And so it will be as if the sun came to shine on our lives.

[...]
But the fox came back to his idea.
-My life is very monotonous, the fox said. I hunt chickens, men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life.
[...]
-One only understands the things that one tames, -said the fox-.
[...]
-Men have forgotten this truth -said the fox-. But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose ...
-I am responsible for my rose... -the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
[...]
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery 


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Sunday, December 18, 2011

Delusion of well-being

Boys work in a carpet factory in Quetta City, Balochistan. UNICEF currently estimates that 150 million children between the ages of five and 14 are engaged in labour of some sort. Although child labour is in decline globally, the economic crisis has forced many children into work earlier and in more hazardous roles.

© UNICEF/NYHQ2006-0352/Giacomo Pirozzi


(ES)

The transformation of a raw material into a finished product requires natural resources, economic, technological and human.
Natural, economical and technological resources are private property in the hands of employers, while human resources are only owners of the labour force that gives them a salary and generates surplus value to the capitalist.

Free market and competition make that employers seek ways of producing their manufactures, with the means of production they own and the labour force they hire, at the lowest possible cost. For what they delocalize their production to countries  with labor laws, environmental, commercial and tax less strict than in Europe and USA.

As a corollary to this, the transformation of raw materials into a finished product not only meets the needs of consumers but also transforms the feelings and lives of all those involved in the commodity chain.

In the consumerist society we live in, marketing has managed to create us fictitious needs and to associate happiness to consume. So, how do you transform a raw material in happiness? What is the price we have to pay, measured in feelings, for our consumerist "happiness" in the miscalled first world?

The solitude of a trafficked minor, away from his or her family, who grows cotton in Benin. The fear of being beaten by the landlord if fails to comply with their strenuous work. The frustration at not being able to attend school. The despair of a human being become beast. The pain of children's muscles fatigued by the hard work.

The fatigue of a Turkish worker who works twelve hours a day with a compressor that shoots a jet of sand and water on the denim from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, dyed by children exposed to high-polluting chemicals. Silica in the lungs and lead in the skin.

The miner dehumanized, turned himself into stone, which extracts the cassiterite from the mines at the east of DR Congo. Exhausted, brutalized by a system in which prevails the survival of the fittest, his life is worth nothing to the militias that control the territory. Forced to work for nothing, enslaved, disheartened. Far from home, fleeing a forgotten conflict, he and his family dies every day from starvation, misery and fatigue.

To enjoy a stonewashed jean or the latest smart phone model have to pay a high price in suffering, because corporate greed knows no bounds, and has appropriated the only thing that did not belong so far, has seized life and labour force of millions of people living in abject poverty, lacking opportunities, and barely surviving on the product of their effort.

How long before also capital seizes our lives by cutting fundamental rights?

Discover that happiness is not what you have but what you give to others is the key to return stolen happiness to the millions of people who, through their suffering, transform our lives in a delusion of well-being. Would not be fair to reimburse them for so much misery that they have been condemned by all of us because of our sad desire to possess material things?

Ethical consumerism will break the chain of poverty and it will contribute to a more socially fair and egalitarian world.


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Sunday, December 4, 2011

Honor and sacrifice


(ES)

Honor is a curtain that surrounds each individual. A curtain woven with the threads of social and moral standards defined for each community.
In some cases the tissue is dense and in others quite clear. And the curtain may be very close or very far away, making the existence of the individual is developed in an atmosphere oppressive, tyrannical, intolerant and distressing, or in an atmosphere lax, informal and relaxed.
Trespassing this curtain is dishonor to the individual. Dishonor that sometimes transcends the family and the other members of their community.

Consider for a moment in the clarity of the tissue and the proximity of the curtain that surrounds us. Is it not true, and universally accepted that the curtain that surrounds women in any society is more dense and is closer than that surrounding the men?

Trespassing the curtain for a woman is synonymous with sacrifice.


© Siegfried Modola/IRIN 

Tear the curtain and facing the world has never been, nor will be, an easy battle for women. Free themselves from oppression and tyranny to achieve equal rights and freedoms than man has been a historic struggle not without sacrifices.

But all curtain hides secrets, especially when the man from the outside is the one that breaks and pierces the dense tissue surrounding the women in some societies. When the victim becomes guilty, and the transgressor enjoys impunity, is when the sacrifice of the woman reaches its peak.

Women raped that are disowned by their husbands and forced to leave their communities. To the physical and psychological trauma of rape joins the circumstance of having to live away from their family because of the dishonor of having been raped. Abandoned women in a society in which a woman alone has little or no chance to survive, without rights, without the means to earn a living, and often, caring for the son or daughter result of the violation.

Women raped that hide in silence their grief to prevent rejection.

Women raped that are forced to marry the rapist. Fatal fate that forces them to live together with the sex offender and live with the stigma of having been raped.

Women killed to repair the honor of a family.

Society of perverse moral that to compensate for the lost honor requires a sacrifice whose victim is always the woman. Twice a victim: of aggression and of sacrifice.

An unjust system that blames the victim and protects the attacker. That is satisfied only with an extreme sacrifice: the death or a sentence for life.

Let us be even more the transgressive men who tear curtains that surround women to free them from the oppression and the tyranny of customs.



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