NUCLEAR THREAT

Monday, April 25, 2016



From every point of view, it is unacceptable that all humanity should live permanently with the great sword of Damocles that thousands of nuclear devices represent and that could by cataclysms, accidentally or voluntarily, be activated and destroy at once the mystery of life and all human beings. It is irresponsible that to guarantee the hegemony of a few, the fate of many -of all! - is jeopardized.

In 1987, Gabriel García Márquez wrote: “...the growing suspicion that it is the only place in the solar system where there has been prodigious adventure of life, we drags mercilessly us to a disheartening conclusion: the arms race runs counter intelligence. And not only of human intelligence, but of the intelligence of nature, as well, whose purpose escapes including of the clairvoyance of poetry. Since the appearance of visible life on Earth must have passed 380 million years for a butterfly learn to fly,  180 million years to make a rose with no other commitment than being beautiful, and four geological eras for beings who unlike human Pithecanthropus grandfather, were able to sing better than the birds and die of love. It is not honorable for human talent, in the golden age of science, to have conceived the way by which a multi-millennial colossal and wasteful process could return to nothingness by simply pressing a button".

We must react. Let’s stop being passive spectators. Raise our voice. Million voices –now that we can express ourselves freely- so that at once we free ourselves from this colossal threat.

Do Humanities come to an end?



And "No one wants philosophers" are issues that tackle a number of excellent collaborators at "El País" in its supplement "Ideas" of April 24, 2016.

"Sanctification of technology and utilitarianism has immersed into disrepute the knowledge related to literature and philosophy”. And so with arts ... Gradually, information in English is searched and found, they manage commercial arrangements that can improve business, colossal arsenals data are handled, considering the advantages of following "new careers”...

And, however, progress is not achieved with “digitally directed” specialists but by those who reflect, imagine, invent. Let us all take note of what Prof. Hans Krebs told me in Oxford in 1966 that I never tire of repeating: "New knowledge, scientific advances are achieved seeing what others can also see ... and thinking what nobody has thought ".


I know it very well as a biochemist that it is essential to know the reality in depth. If we know it superficially, we can modify it in an epidermic way. To recognize the past, act in the present and think together about the future.

The immense media power leaves no time to think, to be oneself, to behave according to our own reflections. We cannot be hijacked by the same technologies that allow us to be citizens of the world and express ourselves, for the first time in history, without restrictions. When we could stop being invisible, anonymous, frightened ... and be fully "human", we cannot allow ourselves to be "de-humanized".

Education is for being not for having.  The goal of education is that each person conducts their own life.  José Luis Sampedro already warned to young people: "You will have to change direction and ship". Many of today's "ships" are managed from distant motions of power ... and are turning many into "automated acolytes" who faithfully follow the guidelines they receive.

We will achieve that through philosophy and art education, the educated human beings are, as established by UNESCO, "free and responsible", able of exercising the distinctive faculties of the human species: thinking, imaging, anticipating, innovating, "creating"... even though “markets” want it or not. And as in "Ulysses" of Lord Tennyson, we can say to everyone, without exception: "Come friends, it is not too late for building a new world".

The future is to be done and will not be the "remote-controls” who achieve it but “free and responsible persons".

Shameful lack of planning for natural disasters

Monday, April 18, 2016



We have hundreds of aircrafts ready for wars which, fortunately, do not take place ... but on which the interested doomsayers’ representatives of the immense and sinister military-industrial complex do not stop alerting. Bombers, missiles and missile shields, battleships, submarines ... colossal arsenals for potential enemies, but total lack of planning for the predictable and recurring enraged weather, for earthquakes, for tsunamis...

I have written on several occasions about the resolute disappearance of ineffective plutocratic groups imposed by neoliberalism, and the need of an urgent re-foundation of the United Nations.  One of their urgent actions would be to coordinate all appropriate devices, which should exist in all surrounding countries, to put timely the technological means in the right places in order to help effectively.

That’s enough.  We are tired of the culture of war, inertia, lack of planning and concerted action facing the important problems.

That Ecuador, so was Haiti a few years ago, so were the tsunamis in Japan and Indonesia... achieve the popular outcry –now we can express ourselves! - so that the necessary measures are adopted without delay. To convene an Extraordinary Session of the General Assembly of United Nations would be the solution to achieve it.

The force has prevailed since the beginning of time. Today, as world citizens, we demand that greatest challenges are solved by knowledge and the word.

Shameful lack of planning for natural disasters



We have hundreds of aircrafts ready for wars which, fortunately, do not take place ... but on which the interested doomsayers’ representatives of the immense and sinister military-industrial complex do not stop alerting. Bombers, missiles and missile shields, battleships, submarines ... colossal arsenals for potential enemies, but total lack of planning for the predictable and recurring enraged weather, for earthquakes, for tsunamis...

I have written on several occasions about the resolute disappearance of ineffective plutocratic groups imposed by neoliberalism, and the need of an urgent re-foundation of the United Nations.  One of their urgent actions would be to coordinate all appropriate devices, which should exist in all surrounding countries, to put timely the technological means in the right places in order to help effectively.

That’s enough.  We are tired of the culture of war, inertia, lack of planning and concerted action facing the important problems.

That Ecuador, so was Haiti a few years ago, so were the tsunamis in Japan and Indonesia... achieve the popular outcry –now we can express ourselves! - so that the necessary measures are adopted without delay. To convene an Extraordinary Session of the General Assembly of United Nations would be the solution to achieve it.

The force has prevailed since the beginning of time. Today, as world citizens, we demand that greatest challenges are solved by knowledge and the word.

To keep promises

Friday, April 15, 2016



"I understand how this pain hurts,
but sing and do not cry. Your best witness is a voice in the air
  and not the outcry bordering the speech that, at the end,
  prevents reflection on what is happening ".

Juan Goytisolo in "La voz y el mundo".

Our power is the voice and the word. An indomitable strength when it becomes the cry of the people makes us moves towards havens of light and hope.

On one hand, we have to say "No" to force, and renounce always to violence. On the other hand, we have to say "Yes" to the tenacious perseverance in not underestimating the consequences of war, imposition, force and power, in such a way that encounter and dialogue, our long standing dream, are reachable.

The future cannot be as permanent as the past: Don Antonio Machado urged us to review history lessons to discover if a description of the past is faithful to the facts.  But above all, urges us to write the future together.  The only way to calm the pain and the memory of past wounds is to dare and imagine to walk together, to define together, to live together -all different, all equal, all unique- the time and space that are yet intact before us.  This is the supreme legacy.  This is the supreme inheritance.

We have not fulfilled our promises too often. In times of prosperity we have not recalled the measures taken in times of trouble, when human pressure is more creative and when passion and compassion include so many things.

To dare is essential. We must remember the appalling words of Albert Camus: "I despise them  because they could have done so much, yet dared to do so little”.  Let us raise our eyes and look forward. What matters is what is in the bend of the road, beyond the valleys of the nearby hills that prevent contemplate the horizon. Only on the ledge, with the fog in front of you, on the dividing line between light and darkness. With more doubts than certainties. But with hope because the future is there, waiting the cross-ploughing line, water and seed.

Planting and sowing without thinking of the harvest. Many seeds will not give results, but there is a fruit that will never bear it: the one of the seed that has not been planted.

We cannot allow that nature and heart die out at the same time. When it is said that there is no solution, do not believe it. It's because they do not know how to find it. It is because they cannot see beyond the urgent tasks of each hour. Each time we must move forward, invent and design the route.
 

The answers are always within us, never outside. We need to listen to everyone, to everything but then it is necessary to be free, free to express stubbornly and decide for ourselves. To be guided by our thoughts and not by instructions and suggestions of others.

Hope is part of the creative capacity of the human beings to be used against inertia and routine. To act
differently and not in a predictable way. And to respond without hatred or resentment like President Mandela.

Large sums of money are invested in borders’ protection and very little to safeguard what lies within them: children, women, wood, water, soil, air... We have come to accept the unacceptable: street children, abandonment. What kind of civilization is this that finds excuses to not take care of the children and considers "expensive" the AIDS treatment in patients without financial resources?

This is the crime of silence. We must work tirelessly to raise the voice, more and more voices, until we achieve for you -for you that you are already with us and for you that will be tomorrow- a life more in accordance with the dignity of every human being. Only then we will be able to look into your eyes.

Much courage will be needed to, with the power of the word, change everything that we have not been able to change until now.

One day in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, with our minds and eyes full of horror, promised to avoid future generations, suffering from violence and war. We must now urgently fulfill the promises we have not achieved.