An analyzed existence is worth living.
For many of us, this is a natural process; for others, it needs to be cultivated. An analyzed life is not intended to make us happier but to make us aware of the reality surrounding us and how we are affected by it.
It is easy to be a compliant citizen but to have agency, it is essential to cultivate an analyzed life. Self-awareness and self-criticism are crucial to developing an analyzed life.
Education is a process of domestication; human beings are domesticated beings. That is what culture is for. There are no wild human beings; there are indigenous peoples with a simple (not simplistic) ecological culture because they live close to nature.
What is the purpose of education in complex societies?
The first part aims to standardize the domestication process, and the second corresponds to the screening process, which includes choosing a course and preparing for a future professional career.
Some will prioritize academic study, others technical study, and others professionalization, which, in theory, will determine the role or function that each citizen will play in society.
Although there is currently greater versatility and socio-professional mobility, there continues to be a clear division in how professions are valued financially and in terms of social recognition. Many tasks performed by undifferentiated workers are more essential to society than socially valued professions and yet are overlooked by the majority.
Who determines what is useful for society and why?
Society is not a neutral environment; those who control wealth and power write the laws and implement a culture that highlights the glorifying features of the existing system.
Education is not to make us more free and autonomous but to serve causes and projects designed by others in the name of interests that are alien to us.
Education does not aim to form citizens to be useful for society but rather to serve the interests of the classes that control it. In short, education is a process of domestication for voluntary servitude.
Adults know that they must teach children how to deal with frustration. Recognizing limits is essential because freedom is not an absolute value; everything in life is relational.
Rules to regulate children's behavior are necessary, but the problem is that education is more obscure than it seems at first glance. Parents and educators are focused on taming children to adapt to "society successfully."
Society, as it exists, is taken for granted, while the child's development is negligible because, at the end of the day, the most important thing is that the child behaves and adapts well. Education should be a process of discovery that would result in the acquisition of knowledge and the accumulation of experience, but the purpose of education is to form obedient workers.
The education system is not designed to stimulate children's natural curiosity and creativity.
Those who control society want obedient citizens who do not question the structure of society but instead focus on careers and personal and family interests. We are not educated to feel society's problems as our own. It is true that, in general, we do not directly create the problems, but doing nothing makes us complicit.
Education should focus on the child's integral development, not just acquiring techno-scientific knowledge and skills. Discovering and developing innate talents is as important, if not more, than the usual school curricula.
University education is considered a beacon of freedom of thought and expression, but the reality is that in many universities, dissonant thinking is censored.
University education, being "superior," is still the continuation of the domestication process. Some teachers are (others not) aware that they are indoctrinating students to become agents of reproduction of worldviews convenient for the powers that be. Economics is a paradigmatic case. How often have we been showered by professionals of different fields regurgitating the myths and dogmas acquired in college, like automatons?
The educational system was designed to produce careerists instead of preparing students to exercise participatory citizenship focused on defending a social and ecological political economy.
Social justice is not condemned to be an ethereal ideal if we place it at the center around which society is organized.
For the economy to function based on ethical principles, it must frame them politically, legally, socially, and culturally.
Society becomes what it rewards and punishes. Democracy does not rhyme with impunity; if political impunity is the norm, then democracy is the exception that confirms it.
Techno-scientific training allows society to count on a class of scientists, researchers, and technicians focused on expanding the frontiers of knowledge and technological innovation, attributing to technoscientism and technofixism the responsibility for finding solutions to the problems created by the previous wave of development stimulated by a dysfunctional system.
A political system with the economy handed over to private initiative and in which private property and wealth accumulation are above any other value can never produce social justice because it rewards the opposite.
A mixed economy model at least has the virtue of containing the influence of money in politics. The private sector can play an active economic role while being democratically regulated. The problem is that maintaining a mixed economy free from the influence of private capital would require the development of participatory democracy and codify into law a maximum ceiling on personal wealth, as well as other precautionary principles to avoid the co-optation of the State by private interests. When the deep state (intelligence agencies, MIC, megabanks, megacorporations, etc.) acquires the power to dictate deep policy, democracy is over.
Citizens must understand that participatory democracy is the only way to exercise democratic control over the private and public sectors. We cannot let the ship sail adrift and hope to reach a safe harbor.
Public and private institutions must be democratically controlled by the citizenry. The politicians democratically elected to represent us must be scrutinized in real-time; democracy exists to defend the Demos.
Education should play an active role in training citizens to participate in democracy. Our reality is very different; we are taught the rudiments of liberal democracy, elections, the separation of powers, the rights and freedoms guaranteed by fundamental law, etc.
Education, politics, economics, and culture must work together to create and maintain a fair society based on participatory democracy.
The skills acquired at school must consider the centrality of political agency. There are duties and rights beyond the professional and family sphere; we do not live in a socio-political void; society is a dynamic system, and the institutions that make it up are always in danger of being hijacked by undemocratic interests, and the achievements of previous generations could be lost at a glance.
In a class society, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." Frederick Douglass
A humanizing culture may not make us more competent, but it increases the likelihood of humanity having a future.
We must prioritize an educational paradigm for a more humanized society, even if it requires taking some techno-scientific skills off the pedestal. We need to stop and reflect, and instead, we are increasingly accelerating the process of dehumanization; the fourth industrial revolution is not underway to humanize society but to transhumanize the human species.
An education for an analyzed life stimulates curiosity in questioning a broad spectrum of established certainties. Normalizing the intolerable begins with naturalizing the process of putting interests above values and resorting to politically manufactured scarcity to implement complacency and conformity.
Curiosity can be fatal for cats but is essential for human cognitive development. An educational system that kills curiosity instead of stimulating it does a disservice to society while providing an excellent service to those who benefit from the system in place.
A healthy society should not be obsessed with perfection, efficiency, productivity, or the perpetual growth of the economy but rather cultivate its humanization.
Education should not seek absolute knowledge nor build a perfect world or an efficient society; education should make us sensitive to truth, justice, and harmony. The imperfections and constraints of earthly life do not block us from developing harmonious, fair, and ecological societies; the problem is the perpetuation of societal models designed, perfected, and reinforced over centuries to serve the interests of the elites, who imposed a system in which the only sacred thing is the iron will to control humanity and nature.
The unnecessary suffering caused by this insane model should outrage us. Still, the management of fear intertwined with hope has kept humanity paralyzed and expectant of change that will never materialize because it was never meant to be transformed into a lasting political agenda, much less into actual political action.
Understanding the systemic dynamics that influence and determine the direction of our lives is the objective of cultivating an analyzed life.
When we are 17 to 18 years old, we are faced with the need to have a sense of what our future should be. Pursue a higher education course or a technical profession, or look for a job out of necessity.
The evident immaturity of those who have yet to reach the age of twenty does not allow them to understand the layers of complexity that make up reality. Most young people end up "choosing" one of the current trends or being influenced by family, teachers, friends, etc.
However, even young people who are firmly convinced that they know the profession or career they want to pursue cannot be sure that they will identify with it because what they idealize may not correspond to the reality they will encounter.
It is most likely that we go through life without becoming aware of the diversity of professions and activities that exist in the world!
We should question the existence of profitable professions and economic activities, which are unnecessary and, in many cases, even harmful to society and the environment.
There is no direct relationship between the usefulness and benignity of a profession or economic activity and the economic reward or investment channeled towards them. Fundamentalist freemarketers will say that we should let the law of supply and demand work and the consumer's good sense decide.
In a society where employment is the only means of obtaining income for most citizens, it is normal to venerate the job creators due to their role in society.
It is crucial to ask whether we could organize society differently. Why do we have to be prisoners ad aeternum of a paradigm in which employment is more important than the real usefulness of what we produce?
The capitalist economic, financial, monetary, and fiscal model that continues to dominate the political economy is not helping citizens to be useful to society; it is generating social exclusion and unnecessary suffering through the imposition of artificial scarcity.
We perceive reality through the ideological-cultural narratives that shape our bio-sociocultural identity. What I understand by dominant narratives corresponds to information with the power to influence what we believe to be our ideas and opinions about the world around us. Repetition and mimicry transform information into bundles of ideological-cultural narratives that define the subconscious bio-sociocultural identity.
Cultivating an analyzed life helps us understand that we are permanently exposed to fictional information with the power to shape our perception of the world and ourselves.
The habit of watching our favorite television programs, films, series, or whatever is a voluntary way of exposing ourselves to messages designed to sell us specific versions of a subject, problem, situation, society, ideology, etc., duly integrated into a media product that we consume to entertain ourselves. We are being indoctrinated while having fun; we must admit that it is a genius way to manipulate people's perceptions.
Information is never neutral because those who create, narrate, and disseminate it are not neutral. Narratives are how humans share stories and communicate ideas and concepts, which can be true, false, or a mix of both.
The basis of a narrative is to follow a logical thread and include a moral message or an idea of how the world works. The ideological-cultural reinforcement will shape the ideological-cultural bias that defines individual bio-sociocultural identity; language and ideological framing are the main tools used to manipulate public perception.
Democratic plurality is important, but it does not guarantee that we make the correct political choices to defend the interests of the class to which we belong. The capitalist system exploits individualism as a way of atomizing society. Personal and business interests and private property rights are prioritized to the detriment of the collective public good.
In the short term and from an individual point of view, it may be advantageous, but in the long term, it means a loss of political and social agency for most citizens. The problem is that we are driven by necessity and the desire to fulfill some of the dreams stimulated by consumer society. This makes us take advantage of the moment's opportunities, neglecting the long-term systemic consequences.
We live absorbed by the superficial foam of everyday life, and we either don't find the time or have the inclination to analyze the systemic problems of our times. As such, we do not seriously consider the possibility of fighting for a completely different society.
John Maynard Keynes predicted that by 2030, the gains in productivity would make possible a 15-hour work week.
Productivity gains were achieved, but most had no reduced working hours. This does not mean that it is not feasible, but we have yet to learn the lesson that power concedes nothing without a demand.
The idea is that the equivalent of working 20 hours a week should be enough to cover basic needs, and we should have access to public universal basic services, which is perfectly achievable. Still, we watch undaunted and serenely the destruction of these same services to serve vested interests.
Anyone who wants to work more hours should be able to do so, as long as the activity is considered useful to society. On the other hand, any citizen who wishes to have more free time to spend with family and friends or for themselves to have a meaningful life at each stage without the need to wait for retirement.
Detractors of the idea of working less to live more argue that most people don't know how to use their time constructively and end up consolidating existing bad habits or acquiring new ones.
The unfounded certainty with which we believe we know what is better for others than themselves is impressive.
Everyone should enjoy the freedom to choose how they want to live as long as they do not harm others. Idleness is not a problem as long as we contribute our part to the collective good of society. What is immoral is consuming more than our fair share, based on the belief that money entitles us to do so without restriction.
Human behavior is full of ambiguities and contradictions.
We go through different phases throughout our lives, and we don't always use our time in the best way or with the best company, but that's life. The key is neither to be too critical nor too indulgent nor to judge others without watching ourselves in the mirror first.
We all fall into the temptation to judge. Although reprehensible, it only becomes a serious problem when we make moral judgments based on biased assumptions and ethical authority that we do not have.
Life should be a discovery made of chosen and random experiences, attempts and failures, ups and downs, matches and mismatches, and it is not the moral judgment of those who consider themselves virtuous that contributes to the humanization of society but solidarity, tolerance, compassion, and empathy.
Reducing working hours is an ecological imperative, working less, producing what is really needed with quality and durability, reducing resource consumption and waste production, and at the same time having a better quality of life.
Modern life is full of unnecessary worries, fears, and stresses that make no sense, but they won't go away on their own; only a system change will solve the problem.
Much of the uncertainty and anxiety felt by most of us could easily be eliminated because it does not derive from a natural cause or human condition defect, but rather from the kind of consolidated system, we put up with.
For example, I enjoy taking solitary walks in nature, a simple activity that combines physical exercise with relaxation, contemplation, and a feeling of belonging. The city environment has the opposite effect with sensory overstimulation that forces the neurocognitive and psycho-affective system to process a flow of artificial information.
In the commodified capitalist city, public spaces, and activities are scarce, and basic services generally have to be paid for, including access to drinking water and the use of bathrooms.
At first glance, the user-pays principle appears to be fair, but it reduces or blocks access to citizens with fewer resources.
Citizens should not be required to be consistent to be accepted or rewarded. Integrity and honesty are more important than consistency. Habits, tastes, interests, and preferences change over time, and socio-professional conventions should not coerce citizens to continue using clothing that has become a straitjacket.
Citizens should be able to be different things at different stages of life.
There's nothing wrong with choosing a career for life or making long-term plans. However, society comprises citizens with all possible combinations of personality, temperament, and life experience who will never be able to develop their potential in a political economy system like ours.
We cannot confuse freedom of being with freedom to choose a style, an identity, a role, a function, or an occupation.
The freedom to be is the awareness of what is truly important at different moments in our lives.
Life should be a discovery made from many experiences. Whoever finds it more comfortable to follow a script, that's fine, but for others, spontaneity is an essential part of life. An analyzed life is worth living; I'm not so sure that a programmed life is, at least not for me.
Most citizens spend their active lives working in unrewarding, boring, painful, or even dangerous activities. Instead of being rewarded for contributing to society with the possibility of working fewer hours and fewer years, they are seen as beasts of burden.
Work cannot be the only way for citizens to be useful to society. I defend that all citizens who wish to do so can completely reinvent their lives and enrich them with new experiences without being judged, punished, excluded, ostracized, or condemned to destitution.
The classist mentality assumes that stupidity is the "natural" cause of why most people become prisoners of poverty.
Out of necessity, when I was seventeen, I got a job in the tanning industry. Spending eight hours a day locked in a windowless pavilion, surrounded by noisy machines, air pollution, chemicals, repetitive tasks, etc., is not exactly a question of freedom of choice.
The majority of the factory's production was destined for the footwear industry. We all like to wear shoes, and that's okay. The market does not exist to explain the reality of life but rather to sell products to those who have the money to pay for them.
For the market to prosper and the economy to grow, it is essential to encourage consumers to buy shoes they don't need to be fashionable.
The search for profit is the market's soul; the more you sell, the more you profit. The market is not concerned with the quality and durability of footwear, nor with the needs of citizens, pollution, exposure of workers to dangerous chemicals, the need for raw materials and energy, or the production of waste; the market is interested in making money and glorifying the role of the entrepreneur.
Creative imagination and human ingenuity are put at the service of the capitalist market economy to design footwear models to create a non-existent need to encourage consumers to buy goods they do not need.
Market rationality in action means wasting energy, resources, raw materials, and human labor to produce superfluous goods instead of producing durable and comfortable quality shoes in moderate quantities (after all, we only have two feet) for everyone without exception.
As with some seasonal agricultural processing units, such as olive oil mills, most sectors could interrupt production when the market was supplied instead of pressuring people to buy unnecessary products and goods.
People only need a few pairs of shoes and some clothing; let's focus on what really matters: nutritious food, housing, clean water, universal public services, and a lot of free time to live.
Adapting to the workplace is a personal matter. What is intolerable for some may be perfectly acceptable for others.
Work is one of the ways for citizens to be useful to society; it cannot be a way of torturing citizens in exchange for survival.
When work turns into torture, the workers must have the right to explain their feelings without fearing retaliation.
Painful, tedious, and dangerous work, which is essential for society, must have reduced working hours and extra pay. Work with the same type of characteristics to produce superfluous goods must be limited or even suppressed because it does not make sense for society to continue producing goods, products, and services just because they are profitable.
The commercial success of any product does not mean that it should continue to be produced.
A democratic cost-benefit analysis based on social justice and environmental protection criteria is how we should determine what should be authorized or prohibited because using fiscal measures to reduce consumption always has an asymmetric social impact.
Instead of raising prices, products should be rationed, and the harmful should be gradually removed from the market.
The market is not rational, democratic, or ecological; the market is driven by greed and hubris.
Essential products, goods, and services must be accessible to everyone. Superfluous products must be classified into at least two categories: those with a low ecological footprint and those with a large ecological footprint. The former must be available for moderate consumption, and the latter must be banned.
In a society where the more stuffed the wallet is, the greater the freedom to consume goods, products, and services; however unnecessary they may be, social and ecological justice is neglected.
This reality should be the subject of a comprehensive critical analysis, and one of the objectives of education should be to stimulate children's natural sensitivity against injustice by giving it a social, cultural, and ideological context.
Injustice is accepted and normalized because justice is not rewarded. We must learn to differentiate between law and justice; the law is not written to do justice but to punish or reward behaviors considered inappropriate or criminal. The law is biased, even when written to defend the collective good; it is ideologically, politically, and economically driven to achieve specific goals.
Justice is a universal structural principle for all human societies. For justice to prevail in the daily reality of life in society, it is essential to reinforce and compensate for ethical behavior and understand the benefits that this reality brings in the immediate and long term for humanity, nature, and future generations.
The political economy model determines how society is structured and organized, which obviously affects the behavior of citizens who have to respond adaptively to systemic constraints.
The production of superfluous products, goods, and services depends on the import of raw materials, natural resources, and minerals from lands controlled by other peoples.
Firstly, natural resources, ecosystems, and living beings are a heritage of the Planet; they do not belong to anyone; it is the supremacy of capital and proprietary rights that leads us to believe that money gives us the right to control people, land, resources, in short literally everything that can be transformed into an asset or commodity.
Disrespecting or expelling indigenous peoples and local communities to hand over territories to multinational corporations so that they can exploit existing resources as long as they are economically viable and framing the destruction of habitats essential to the survival of a living community made up of a multitude of species as externalities. This is an example of profound injustice that the so-called free market has normalized and the citizens as consumers actively support.
There is a big difference between a territory and the concept of private property. All living beings depend on a habitat to survive; a territory is a more extensive habitat essential for the survival of many species. There will be no shortage of those who propose equivalence between the two concepts, but a territory will never need to be a property protected by law to have the right to exist.
Local communities must be responsible for the democratic management of the territory and natural resources, minerals, etc. The central government must be obliged by law to negotiate with local communities before approving and implementing national projects.
Private property, the size of companies, personal wealth, family assets, and inheritances must be limited by laws and monitored democratically.
The commons (collective property) must be managed as wealth that does not belong to anyone but is everyone's responsibility.
By default, the dominant culture neglects and despises everything public.
Indigenous peoples protect and venerate the territory where they live because the true wealth is the salmon that swims up the river and is a food source for wild animals and human communities.
Nobody thinks about killing bears to prevent them from eating salmon because the most important thing is that salmon return the following season so that each species that depends on this natural gift continues to survive and maintain the ecosystem balance.
For the capitalist entrepreneur, enrichment is more important than the consequences of his actions; the more salmon he catches, the more money he will earn. The capitalist mentality means exploiting while it is profitable and moving to another location.
Many believe this is no longer true because businesspeople are more conscious, and environmental legislation is more stringent. It is a fact that some measures go beyond cosmetics, but the system has stayed the same, and the underlying mentality is incompatible with the principles of universal justice.
The idea of the existence of commons, land, ecosystems, native fauna and flora, rivers, mountains, and the air we breathe, free and without owner, horrifies capitalists. Private ownership and management of literally everything that exists on Planet Earth and beyond should be privatized.
It seems imperative to review this mentality deeply rooted in our subconscious that insidiously poisons humanity's innate sense of justice.
One of the characteristics shared by complex societies is that they always end up controlled by sociopaths or megalomaniacal psychopaths. This happens because firstly, wealth and power attract them like a magnet; secondly, they resort to any means to achieve ends, unscrupulous opportunists; thirdly, they are, or hire skillful manipulators; fourthly, they create a legal system that protects them, a police force that defends them, and a moral code that glorifies them.
We seem to have reached the end of the rope; either we wake up or run the risk of heading down a path of no return. Threats such as transhumanism, technofascism, AI, bioengineering, neo-Malthusianism, etc., can make human societies unrecognizable, and I doubt it is for the better.
We have no qualms about plundering nature, decimating animals to extinction, destroying ecosystems, and expelling and exterminating indigenous peoples under the pretext of development, even if the true motivation is profit.
How many cases could we list of countries that see their resources plundered and development never arrives? The same happens with hunger; the so-called international community never finds the money to fight hunger in the world.
I believe most people know it was never due to a lack of food or money! There is always a reserve of money under the mattress when it comes to financing the most infamous projects.
What they call support for development is, in most cases, a debt trap to sabotage actual development and corrupt national elites to facilitate the plunder of the country while the populations suffer.
There is only one wealth in the world: natural wealth; money is an instrument used to create artificial scarcity to coerce people into compliance.
What disturbs me most is everything that is destroyed unnecessarily to feed a society based on consuming superfluous and luxurious products.
The idea is that the market should produce everything that has the potential to be sold because the final decision rests with the consumer's "wisdom," as if consumption is based on rational analysis, not on the manipulation of desire and dissatisfaction induced by marketing.
We live in a society trained to be in constant search for innovation, new features, new models, new designs, etc.
Environmental protection must begin by reducing the consumption of non-essential products, goods, and services.
There are non-essential goods where it is justified to ration consumption. Rationing means that it is not the purchasing power that determines access but rather democratic distribution.
Inflation and austerity force citizens with fewer means to deprive themselves of essential goods. Fighting inflation through austerity measures is unfair because it only affects citizens at the bottom of the social pyramid.
Government price control allows access to moderate quantities of what we all need, and rationing is the fair way to avoid excess demand.
We can continue to believe in the idea that those who have money should be able to buy whatever they want. This group is shrinking, and those who do not have enough to have a dignified life are growing, especially in the so-called rich countries of the West. I believe it is fairer and more balanced to fight for a more frugal, cooperative, and ecological society.
The supremacy of capital over life, consumerism over political agency, the tyranny of the market over the public option, and the division between humans and nature should be reviewed. It is not more capitalism that we need, but public services and the financialization of the ecosystem services won't heal the divide between humans and nature.
Most of us recognize that we are somehow part of nature, but we do little or nothing to transform this recognition into a lasting sense of belonging. Nature is not an immaculate garden; it comprises a living environment in dynamic balance.
Instead of idealizing a nature that does not exist or believing that we can develop technologies to repair the damage and rebuild a new nature, it would be better to have a civilizational paradigm shift.
Solutions imposed from the top down will increase the impoverishment of the lower classes so that the elites can continue to enjoy the privileges to which they believe they are entitled.
I think it's naive to expect elites to make democratic and fair decisions on behalf of the collective.
The only alternative to the technofascist transhumanist dystopia that is on the rise is the formation of strong grassroots organizations with a clear idea of what society should be.
When state and business interests are indistinguishable, "democratic" governments become indifferent to the popular will.
The popular political movement of the yellow vests (mouvement de gilets jaunes) has been organizing protests against austerity, green taxes, etc, since 2018. Despite being quite a significant movement, the Macron government did not change substantially the neoliberal governance. Why?
Because there is still a lack of popular unity.
The only way to change the irresponsible stance of most Western governments is through popular unity. Movements, groups, and organizations for peace and neutrality, for a social and ecological economy, and for an international order based on universal principles of political, economic, social, and ecological justice must create a common international front with which the vast majority of ordinary citizens identify, including those who are being captivated by the populist demagoguery of the far-right with slogans such as restoring order, fighting corruption, defending the family, etc.
Everyone who expects proto-fascist parties to implement more social justice, better public services, and better living conditions will be greatly disappointed.
We have to fight for a more frugal, social, supportive, fairer, democratic, and ecological society.
Work should be just one way for citizens to be useful to society; it should never be the only one.
Access to housing, universal public services, and essential goods must be guaranteed by the principle of socioeconomic justice because money works better to measure social injustice than to reduce it.
Social and economic justice is achieved by fairly distributing labor and the products resulting from it, producing, first and foremost, essential goods, products, and services to satisfy basic needs and have a dignified life.
The ethical choice should not be placed on the individual consumer; ethics must be integrated into the principles of political economy and codified in the law that regulates economic activity as part of the architecture of a fair and ecological society.
Megacorporations (including too-big-to-fail banks and huge asset management companies) have the power to codify the interests of the capitalist class into law, corrupting the essence of the rule of law.
I never tire of mentioning the following quote: "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." by Frédéric Bastiat.
This is precisely what happens over and over again. The general public does not wake up to the obvious fact of the need to create a system resilient to the insidious control of state institutions by oligarchs and plutocrats who dictate the deep policy that ends up codified in law as a form of legalizing the looting of public assets.
The mainstream media and PR companies take on the role of justifying and glorifying the right of these groups to hijack the State and use the State power to coerce society into obedience.
How do we reverse the obscene concentration of wealth and centralization of power?
To be able to implement any kind of regime change, we must first neutralize the power and influence of the deep state.
The elections are transformed into a theater of the absurd; therefore, the political circus can continue.
No matter who is elected, governments have to follow a script written by third parties, which passes from one government to the next, and only changes that do not affect the interests of the deep state are authorized.
Only with comprehensive, united, and determined political movements will we be able to reverse the influence of the deep state in politics. Governments, as they exist, have little room for maneuver, and if they try to go beyond what is foreseen in the pre-established roadmap, their governance will be sabotaged, they will receive threats, and if they do not give up, they will end up deposed or killed.
The deep state has ways of fabricating false evidence or using private life material to blackmail, incriminate, and destroy the reputation of any politician who opposes it. The power of a government or political leader genuinely committed to changing the established order lies in the organized democratic participation of citizens.
Participatory democracy is the only way to prevent society, economy, politics, and culture from being hijacked by vested interests, and the deep state is a kind of permanent shadow government to ensure that circus politics plays the role it is supposed to play.
The system we live in is not just dysfunctional; it is criminal. It is impossible to accumulate wealth and satisfy every possible imaginary whim without causing irreversible damage somewhere.
When did the free market take into account the natural rights of human beings who have lived in a territory for hundreds or thousands of years, but as they do not have a document proving legal ownership of the property, they can be forcibly removed or deceived with promises which are never fulfilled, so that the natural riches, a collective heritage, not only of indigenous peoples but of all living beings that make up a given habitat or ecosystem can be plundered for profit.
A social and ecological political economy requires the participation of all citizens. Work is how each citizen contributes to the production, transformation, allocation, and distribution of goods, products, and services essential to the proper functioning of society.
The satisfaction of basic needs, access to universal basic services, and the construction of essential infrastructures must respect the precautionary principle instead of competing for the gold medal of megalomania.
Work less so everyone can be productive. The less desirable a job is (those jobs that we assume must be done by citizens with low qualifications, undifferentiated, or immigrants), the shorter the working day should be.
Nobody wants to promote a society of parasites. For this, we already have the current one, in which a parasitic minority (FIRE sector) transformed the real economy and the fabric of society into a host. Financial or rentier capitalism does not produce anything useful for society. Still, it controls the economy, politics, and society, rewarding those who contribute to keeping the machine well-oiled and profitable.
Most of us don't see them as parasites but as innovative entrepreneurs and wealth creators who know how to seize opportunities others miss. After all, it is in the financial sector that we can have the opportunity to get rich in a short time, while those who do necessary work, care for people, produce food, clean streets, fill supermarket shelves, etc., receive salaries that do not allow them to have economic security, especially in the absence of universal basic services.
Justice sees more than it should when it should be blind, but meritocracy is totally blind when it comes to rewarding social, economic, and financial parasitism.
The merit of any activity, profession, or behavior lies in its usefulness for society and the humanization it adds to it.
The poor are also prisoners of this mentality. After all, successful people are seen as role models regardless of how wealth is obtained. However, we can assume and cultivate a different stance. Firstly, because the joy of living has more to do with securing what is essential to a meaningful life than accumulating superfluous wealth.
A society that promotes existential anxiety, uncertainty, and artificial scarcity as tools of social, political, and economic submission does not promote happiness; even when people become wealthy, they continue to feel anxiety.
There is a big difference between living in poverty and living a simple, frugal life. Being poor means not having enough money to meet basic needs, including food, clothing, and shelter, but what's worse is the anxiety of always living in the uncertainty of being unable to pay the rent, buy medicine, etc., or facing emergencies and unforeseen events.
In a society where there are means to satisfy the basic needs of all citizens and yet poverty persists, we must conclude that a part of the population is subject to a regime of artificial scarcity. Poverty is also a form of violence, as poor citizens are more subject to abuse, exploitation, exclusion, and neglect.
We can justify the existence of poverty, and the easiest way is to blame the victims because it cannot be the way society is organized.
A fair, social, and ecological economy aims to satisfy the basic needs of all citizens, without exception, and each citizen must contribute to society with a minimum of productive work that is useful to society.
Many citizens understand the value of simplicity as a way of having more free time to do what they enjoy at different moments and stages of life. However, this is not a mere personal choice because many systemic constraints limit citizens' choices.
Freedom is a more complex dynamic process than it seems at first glance. To begin with, freedom is always relational, and as we acquire a more comprehensive understanding of the importance of the social, political, and ideological-cultural context in which our social relationships occur, the better we understand which are the basic conditions and circumstances that make us feel free.
We can and should have an objective definition of freedom, but freedom is always a subjective experience that changes over time and with the experience of living.
One thing is useful work; another is profitable activities; capitalist societies encourage the search for profit to the detriment of the actual usefulness of the goods, products, or services provided to society.
There are people satisfied with their profession in all types of activities and sectors, but we will find more dissatisfied workers in low-paid, boring, painful, and dangerous jobs.
The verb to work originates from the Latin' tripaliare,' which is derived from tripalium, a torture instrument formed by three stakes used to beat slaves as a form of punishment.
The association is obvious: the hard manual work in the fields, construction of temples and palaces, aqueducts, production of weapons and armor, etc., at the end of long working days, people felt as if they had been beaten.
Firstly, work must be a free choice. Citizens who willingly undertake jobs that the majority considers unpleasant should be rewarded above average and work fewer hours. In the absence of sufficient volunteers, and the work is essential for the proper functioning of society, a democratic solution must be found that does not involve forcing the members of a specific group to do it. In democracy, there are no lower and upper classes, or it is not democracy.
We assume that the jobs hated by the majority must be done by disadvantaged citizens because they have no choice or by legal and illegal immigrants, sometimes in conditions of slavery.
But it doesn't have to be like this, as happens in private life; spouses have to reach an understanding about how to get the domestic tasks done. One spouse may voluntarily assume responsibility for household chores but should never be coerced into doing so.
Citizens should not feel obliged to work out of fear and mere necessity; a democratic society educates children and young people to integrate into a just society, while a culture of privileges and entitlements assumes the existence of inferior and superior people, affecting how we see our participation in society.
A fair society does not function based on the exploitation of fear and uncertainty; these artificial conditions were created to manipulate and coerce citizens.
Punishment should only be applied exceptionally when there is no other alternative. Inflicting unnecessary suffering, such as depriving people of essential goods or forcing them to live on the streets, is pure dehumanization; what is the moral lesson that people should infer from these "constructive" experiences?
The family and sociocultural environment in which the child grows up is fundamental for the psychocognitive formation of the bio-sociocultural identity.
A child who grows up in an educated and sophisticated upper-middle-class family will be exposed to different experiences than a child who grows up in a working-class family.
The quality of primary care and affection provided can be equated. Still, economic and sociocultural limitations mark a clear disadvantage between different groups and social classes, meaning sociocultural backgrounds can differ significantly between children and young people from asymmetric socio-professional backgrounds, regardless of innate congenital traits.
The school's primary function is to domesticate children. Most young people reach the end of secondary school without knowing what they really want to do with their lives, but even if they believe they know, they may later conclude that they were wrong after all.
We all have the potential to be and do different things. Careerism serves a hyper-specialized society, but this says very little about the other possibilities of having a life with meaning and purpose.
Versatility and the need for change are common, and it is normal for people to want to be and do different things at different times in their lives.
We all are faced with the need to make choices; we make them based on the knowledge and experience acquired up to that point in our lives and possibly on taking advice.
Expecting that most eighteen-year-olds can understand what they're really going to be and what they'd like to do when they become forty, fifty, or older is ridiculous. Young people choose a course where they will invest a lot of time and resources to throw everything away if they conclude that they made the wrong choice. Some courses and careers are relatively easy to recycle, but professional success, social status, and acquired privileges are not easy to leave behind.
It is unlikely that most young people are aware of all the existing options or that they realize the future impact of the choices made at such a young age.
Life is a discovery made from a multitude of experiences that open doors and windows to landscapes and perspectives that were previously impossible to imagine.
Acquiring knowledge is important but must be accompanied by developing critical thinking. It is crucial to teach children to detect logical and reasoning fallacies and systematic skepticism.
The knowledge that we consider factual takes part in the management of a living system, which is our organism composed of several systems committed to maintaining homeostatic levels compatible with life.
We fail to realize the role of beliefs in the process of understanding ourselves and the society where we live.
Believing means accepting the veracity of a particular axiom, idea, or narrative without needing verification.
Taking beliefs as facts makes us vulnerable to being manipulated with extreme ease. When a significant part of our implicit memories comprises beliefs, we build a fake bio-sociocultural identity, which affects how we run our lives and understand reality.
Neither school, family, nor society prepares us to lead an analyzed life. Our life is entirely dominated by personal, family, professional, or business interests because, in the society we live in, everything is conditioned by the pursuit of professional success and material wealth.
Motivated by an existential crisis or simply by dissatisfaction with our society, we can begin the process of leading an analyzed life.
When we complain about how society is organized, we are told why don't you move to the middle of nowhere; if we complain about work opportunities and life choices, we are told to create our own business.
In other words, the answers always lean towards blaming the person and never the system.
Living in the middle of nowhere is not the same as living outside of society; we are still subject to laws that apply to the entire territory, and almost no one can be self-sufficient, meaning that living without money is not an option.
If society is dysfunctional and unfair, living in the middle of nowhere or creating your own business does not change this reality. Many people live in a state of denial, believing that it is a matter of individual poor choices. Of course, poor choices are a reality, but these choices do not happen in a social vacuum, and many of us still believe that we make decisions free of influence.
When I was young, I dreamed of living in a community (I spent two weeks at https://archecom.org/la-borie-noble) or buying a farm to lead a simple life, grow an organic garden, have animals, etc., but the money remains necessary.
The takeaway is no matter where we live, whether we choose to work for others or be self-employed, the country's jurisdiction, monetary, fiscal, economic, and social policies affect our lives, as does austerity policies with the increase in taxes and cuts to government programs.
The conventional paradigm of the academic universe is based on creating an elite of intellectual and scientific authorities promoted by mass media and virtual platforms as referential figures.
Academics and scientists do not all tune in by the same tuning fork; those with dissonant messages will be subject to censorship.
If the ability to disseminate messages is asymmetric, the principle of freedom of expression is a joke. Freedom is pure fiction in the absence of equal opportunities.
AI will be increasingly used to filter the messages that the public will have access to; under the rubric of disinformation and misinformation, non-compliant content will be censored and suppressed.
In any case, it is important to know the work of mainstream intellectuals and academics. We should not predispose ourselves to swallow the wisdom of these luminaries uncritically, but we should also not summarily exclude them.
It is essential to call into question the perpetuation of the top-down model, authorities on one side and obedient followers on the other.
Civilization is undergoing a radical transformation, with the standardization of technologies that will enable absolute control of society.
Societies are controlled by a plutoligarchy that dictates deep politics at a time in history when it is imperative to have a participatory democratic political system focused on discussing what kind of future we want for humanity.
The almost six centuries of imperialist colonialism imposed by the West on the rest of the world must end once and for all. This reality must be replaced by an international order based on democratic pillars that prevent the development of economic, financial, political, and military asymmetries that could be used unilaterally as geopolitical leverage, as is currently the case.
International cooperation means establishing a model of development that suits all parts toward a balance in trade exchanges.
Developing a civilization based on peace, cooperation, and justice requires being scrutinized by the power of Demos; participatory politics is the missing link. Whatever we discuss, if it does not contribute to highlighting the importance of political participation, it is ineffective, or we will always end up controlled by the wealthy class.
Instead of democratic participation for a fair, social, and ecological economy, we will have a digitalized society controlled by AI. Who controls the AI?
We will reach the situation of not being able to do anything without the support of AI or being able to discern the line that separates reality from fiction, which, in truth, is already the case.
The indelible link between scientific research, technological development, money, and power does not aim to make society more democratic, free, and fair; whoever believes it lives under the effect of delusional hypnosis.
The plutoligarchy controls the State; to be more precise, we live under a regime in which the interests of the State and the plutoligarchy are fused, which explains why governments are irresponsive to the demands of the citizenry.
Intellectuals and academics have, like any other citizen, an ideological-cultural affiliation; therefore, they are biased, which does not make them liars.
The problem of lying arises when the argument is intentionally forged to manipulate the perception of followers or the general public. Demagoguery and rhetorical sophistication can easily win over the minds and hearts of citizens desperate for a savior, hero, omniscient authority, or charismatic leader.
Political debates broadcast by the media are examples of what a debate should not be; instead of debating facts and presenting and defending government or electoral programs, they compete for a sophism prize. Circus politics are as good as any other form of entertainment at distracting the public.
Is Obama an excellent speaker, or is he a vicious manipulator? Should we prioritize ethical principles and the uncompromising defense of facts or idolize a speaker for his gifts of cunningly hypnotizing an unsuspecting audience?
The problem is how easily we trust the wrong people simply because they know how to take advantage of the weaknesses and flaws of the human condition. If we want to build a society where people can express their humanity, it is essential to have an analyzed life. An analyzed life requires learning to feel what we rationalize, as emotions and feelings function as qualifiers that can help us see through the BS.
The problem is that thinking and feeling are interconnected in the form of cognitive-affective processes, and, once again, demagoguery can induce emotions and feelings based on lies and manipulation.
A fragmented conversation or debate without trans-contextual references that establish the indispensable connections to develop a comprehensive understanding of any problem, from the personal to the global scale, is part of the divide and control strategy.
On the other hand, it is essential to recognize how much the experience and knowledge of others influence us; personal bio-sociocultural identity is a dynamic "collective" process; daily pieces of other people's experiences and knowledge become part of this process that occurs in the cognitive-affective system of each one of us.
What we believe to be our identity is a collective process. We understand the world through ideological-cultural lenses in which the part we add is tiny, which does not mean it is not important.
We are in the second decade of the 21st century and continue to follow the civilizational and societal paradigm of the 20th century, a political and geopolitical economy defined by five centuries of Western imperialist and colonialist supremacy, currently known as globalization, with the deep state globalists dictating global governance.
The multipolar reality cannot be merely a replacement for the declining order. I do not believe in the goodness of any type of regime; I believe in democratic accountability of political, economic, and military power.
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. We can never take power as a neutral reality; the concentration of power and wealth accumulation always give rise to political authoritarianism because it is the only way to control an unjust and unequal society.
Neither a libertarian dystopia nor any societal model that allows the concentration of wealth and centralization of power are viable solutions for humanity to have a future. Any paradigms that do not involve the effective democratization of society, economy, and politics will end up being more of the same.
As we increasingly depend on what I call convenienceism (the state of extreme dependence on convenience), the probability of developing a culture that opposes the madness of a transhumanist dystopia is small.
Understanding the roots of feelings that disturb psychosomatic well-being is another subject in which we must become "experts."
In the first phase of our existence, there is little we can do to defend ourselves, so society must provide social, psychological, pedagogical, and educational help to avoid a lot of unnecessary suffering.
From puberty to young adulthood, we are manipulated to pursue an ideal of fake perfection based on artificial models of beauty and physical complexion.
The insecurity caused by the body's transformations is exploited to cause low self-esteem and stimulate the consumption of goods, products, and services that will compensate for perceived natural imperfections and limitations.
Adolescence is a time of questioning and comparison, the need to be accepted and belong to a group, and young people need to feel good in their own skin for healthy socialization.
The hyper-commodification of children and young people should be prohibited because it induces young people to adapt habits, styles, behaviors, and even dependencies to feel good and integrated.
The creation and dissemination of manufactured insecurities and artificial needs should be an indicator of the insanity of a society because it contributes to the development of psychological problems diagnosed by psychiatry as "chemical imbalances," but which are primarily societal problems.
If mental disorders could not be diagnosed as chemical imbalances, Big Pharma could not create a need for chemical balancers to justify the multibillion-dollar profit industry.
Socioculturally induced insecurities can cause identity problems. Feeling insecure or going through phases of low self-esteem and identity crises is normal. The problem is that children and young people are influenced by sociocultural trends and fashions, and without them realizing it, they can develop distorted perceptions about themselves based on comparisons that can make them believe that they are or want to be something that they actually are not.
Socialization is fundamental to the development of children and young people. However, socialization is insidiously permeated by examples of behavior dictated by manipulative marketing.
It is in a world ruled by the search for profit, cynicism, hypocrisy, and lies that young people have to find their place, which means that many have to deny and reject part of what they are and feel in order to adapt to an insane society.
It is not the understanding of the roots of the problems with the aim of solving them that motivates institutions and professionals but the mitigation of the symptoms; by default, the system cannot be the cause of the problems.
It seems essential to me to reflect on what a fair, social, and ecological society should be. We need to have an honest and democratic conversation to decide what we really need to lead a life with joy and meaning.
Social isolation is, for many, a way to protect themselves from social interaction that takes more than it gives.
The dominant culture does not give us the opportunity to show who we really are without being criticized or judged. Socializing to be, not to pretend.
Knowing how we want to use our time is a sign of maturity and wisdom.
We comply with the idea of "participating" in society as if it were a battlefield.
Compete to gain a place in the market and win at any cost to reach the top. What kind of world do we hope to build based on this mindset?
Socializing should indeed enrich us, but not at the expense of impoverishing others.
When socialization is managed based on assessing what we can gain or lose, there is little more to add.
Extractive pragmatism encompasses natural and human resources; the commodification of human relations has transformed us into calculative opportunists.
It is the dominant societal order that determines the behavioral patterns exhibited by the majority of citizens.
We are formatted and trained by a socio-educational system that mainly rewards the characteristics of the human condition that should be penalized. With avarice (an extreme desire for money and possessions) at the top, the commodification of everything, including life itself, and unrestricted consumption of superfluous goods are three examples that drive human behavior in contemporary society.
The educational system reflects society, which in turn reflects the dominant political, economic, and cultural systems reinforceíng each other to condition human behavior and mold it to the market's needs. Society has been transformed into a subsystem of the so-called free market.
Why do so many people adopt a defeatist stance, arguing that society has always been like this and that it will never change?
Is it because we have been conditioned to accept this reality instead of challenging it and demanding a paradigm shift?
Complacency is an adaptive strategy to a reality that seems too big to combat.
The family, school, and the media indoctrinate each new generation, so infotainment consumption inhibits political awareness development. Films, television series, sports, talk shows, reality shows, contests, and lots of ads commodify all aspects of human existence.
Recreational leisure is a fundamental right, but spending our free time sprawled on the sofa watching TV equates to voluntarily subjecting ourselves to a continuous process of ideological-cultural propaganda not designed to make us freer and more enlightened but to stupidity us.
The media could have a liberating educational role. Long ago, in Portugal, the second public television channel (RTP2) in the pre-internet era was the primary source of high-quality information and knowledge I could access for free as a self-educated person.
Today, mainstream media has been transformed into a weapon of mass deception. Who are the main spreaders of disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda, and why?
Public education on political economy, macroeconomics, and monetary and fiscal policy is null. It is said that money is what makes the world go round, but the public does not have the right to know how the banking and financial systems really work. Who and how is new money created and comes into circulation in the economy? What is the role of central banks? What is sovereign currency, and how does it work?
We live under the dictatorship of a financialized economy that dramatically affects the lives of ordinary citizens, yet we are supposed to accept this reality as acquired because of TINA. Is the time not ripe to break the spell?
Debate on these topics is discouraged, and we are generally comfortable with political correctness.
But how do we expect to understand the reality we live in, visualize where we fit in, and have a sense of where we should be heading if we continue to comply with worn-out and destructive models?
Western media are the primary agents of disinformation, misinformation, and lies by omission that make up the fictional reality in which most people live.
It must be countered with systematic doubt, prophylactic skepticism, and critical analysis.
The sensory organs are windows open to the world, and the brain is more than just an information interpretation center; it is an information processing unit in subconscious mode.
Neuronal networks resort to the accumulated experience in the form of implicit memories to identify, compare, and manage stored patterns with those that sensory organs capture in real time so that the living organism can respond as adequately as possible to environmental challenges.
On the other hand, human beings can create and develop symbolic languages used for creative, artistic, literary, and scientific expression and communicate with each other.
Symbolic languages allow humans to create fictional ideological-cultural realities more powerful than reality itself and use them to transform how we structure and organize societies with all the inherent consequences.
The problem is when symbolic languages are used to design narratives with the intentional purpose of creating asymmetrical societies in which political and economic power will be concentrated in an elite. This is our reality; either we change it radically, or it will be our demise.
The knowledge we can consciously evoke represents the visible tip of the iceberg based on subconscious experiential knowledge. The cumulative experience in a living organism such as a human being is a process in which information is recycled and reused to recreate and reorganize new knowledge and new ways of understanding reality.
We don't understand much of what we know, and much of what we believe we know is incorrect, wrong, or false, but it is still part of the subconscious living "library" as reliable references.
Most of us live focused on worries, fears, obligations, and material goals, or we don't feel inclined to lead an examined life.
But the truth is that the exercise of freedom, any form of freedom, is closely linked to the reliability of the knowledge acquired.
In a world where propaganda is reality, an analyzed existence is imperative to navigate through the thick fog of perception manipulation we all face.
