Drifting ithrough a warm summer night...

Dreams of freedom and fears of a vague, impending disaster occupy my mind now. I keep my personal life out of this “pseudo-blog” as much as possible and I won’t intrude with it here either, except to say that I will be in Colombia soon for the first time and perhaps soon after that for a second and much longer stay.

I have had time to ruminate lately as I work a manual labor job (working with metal in a factory). Most of my thoughts have been fruitless wanderings down cerebral garden paths that led no where of any importance. I spent several hours working out FOREX risk/return calculations in my head and fantasizing about compound interest, spreads and minimum stop-losses on major currency pairs, and using Fibonacci retracements as a strategy. I convinced myself to try again with another demo account and I did make some good money my first days after working trying it out. But I didn’t really truly grasp what was moving the prices and it was little more than a guessing game in the end— albeit one with sensible risk-reward ratios that minimize losses and amplify gains—and it isn’t a viable plan with which I would put real money to work yet.

Another day this past week I worked through plot lines of a novel I had been tumbling around in my head. I am still wrestling with the basic logic of the plot. I mean plot in two ways here, because at the heart of the novel is a grand plot to rule the world. The two plots, the one of the events of the novel and the one that is the plan to rule the world which drives the events of the novel, have been advancing slowly and with some regression. I have hit some stumbling points in the practicality of how the characters would execute their grand scheme. This more than once has brought to mind the Umberto Eco novel, Foucault’s Pendulum in which the writing about the all encompassing, ancient conspiracy is inextricably intertwined with the conspiracy itself and the reader and writer of this Gnostic fiction become hopelessly entangled in a web of intrigue. Working out these issues as a novel is, in some ways, both my own way of living vicariously the characters and of my own plan for global conquest for which I still hold out hope. There will be more information to come on this subject…and hopefully a full novel as well.

These are the wanderings of a mind that otherwise would feel the effects of boredom. Fears of this encroaching doom haven’t bothered me much lately, in part because it feels so inevitable that I have given up worrying about it for the time being. The issue has been discussed at great length elsewhere and in my publications and educational videos, and I may devote some posts about my explanations of it in this blog in the near future (when I have the initiative to provide some more factual data and citations). It is basically an economic rebalancing of the world and the massive pain that this will cause before the change is complete. The ripples caused by fears of a Greek sovereign debt default were the most minor presages of what is to come. The domino effect predicted for the other PIIGS (Portugal Italy Ireland Greece Spain) may or may not happen. If it does, this may or may not push the world over the edge. But the United States itself is what worries me even more than these European countries now. Our debt as a percentage of GDP is on par with several of the PIIGS countries, our fiscal policies are out of control and our monetary policy is just as ludicrous. Healthcare costs are rising much higher than the rest of the inflation rate (17% last year, if memory serves me) and this is at a time when we are transitioning to a system of government healthcare that has been bankrupting European nations. We pay off our debts by taking out newer and larger debts. When this debt cycle finally begins to cascade downwards, the entire world system will be shaken to its core. Will a downgrade by a credit rating agency cause it? Will government reform lead to this calamity? Will a natural disaster push us over the brink? I don’t know yet. I see a collapse and rebalancing as inevitable but cannot predict the moment when this will take place.

I say dreams of freedom (see the opening sentence) perhaps because after years of being tied to a school (either as student or teacher) I have some money, some wanderlust, and plans to combine the two along with a change of location. Individuality is something that I value (which I owe to my cultural education) on a personal level but at the same time I prize stability, regularity, and safety. Freedom is for most of us now, financial freedom. With enough money, we can live where we want and how we desire. We can do what we please and move freely. Money buys the rights we maintain too, in a way, in our modern corporatocracies, though very rarely is it our money and it is usually our freedoms being sold rather than bought.

I want to create. I want to make. I am to move and change and feel secure while I do it. I want to be in control of my life. I want to be respected. I want to be loved. I have noticed that my sentences begin with “I want”. It is the mood I am in tonight: self centered and full of desire in all of my musings.

If I move to Colombia long term, I will begin a personal blog of my experience and this blog will tend to be more impersonal (and at times, abstract).

"Lie"

Disclaimer: this is a short story and a work of fiction not based on real events.
I wrote this during the summer of 2009.

"Lie"

I will never forget the summer my brother died. Through the intervening decades and the innumerable vicissitudes of a long life, that summer smolders in my memory not as the adjunct to that one, solitary moment of ultimate finality but rather as a single moment spanning a period of the greatest joy, the most mind numbing ennui and culminating in the profoundest grief imaginable. In my mind, the memory of that summer has been contracting into a single point and all that I felt, all that I experienced is contracted into that single lump, forever just beneath surface of my life. My brother’s death is inseparable from our lives that summer as it is inseparable from the leaves matted on the ground, from the wooded hills, from the lake or from the wind moving among the trees.

The lake where my brother died is no more than thirty steps from where I write this account now. Its waters are as frigid and silent as they ever were. Remorseless, the waves tell no tales and promise no forgiveness. My family use to live about a half mile down the valley from here and the two of us had to hike to get to this spot. The trek was worth the effort because there were rock overhangs, caves, broad limbed oaks for climbing and all manner of diversion for boys of that age. On this evening, the first time I have returned since that summer, the landscape looks identical. I can hear my wife breathing next to me as I write this.

She lies there, the gentle rise and fall of her chest betraying signs of life, as if she were deep in thought as she sleeps. Does the memory of this place penetrate her slumber to furrow her brow or is it only my mind that bends its perceptions of the world around that moribund fulcrum of grief?

Emma, the most beautiful girl in school, was too shy to be popular and too intelligent to pay any attention to me. She had eyes only for my brother, who was a year younger than myself and a natural at all sports that involved individual victory, that is to say all sports in which he could prove his unquestioned superiority over me. It was only after my brother’s death that Emma spoke to me and to my great surprise we began dating later that year. She had long dark hair, hips that swung from a petite waist and delicate fingers that were usually seen grasping a book, her narrow, almond eyes moving over its pages for hours on end as she pursed her thin lips in concentration.

She looked then much as she does now, lying here next to me. She told me that she didn’t think it was a good idea for us to come here, that pitching a tent so close to the spot where my brother had lost his life so many years ago would only rend apart long healed psychological wounds. What she cannot understand, however, is that the nothing has healed for me. The final splash in the water, the wind threw the trees, the half-light of the evening cresting the hill, are all as real to me everyday as they were then. Every word I have ever uttered has been a lie and the wind threw these trees whispers the only truth. Every instant has been another scab on this unhealing wound and now I have finally come to tear off the rotted flesh of the accumulated years and expose it to the world.

I told her I loved her. She also told me that she loved me. She is innocent, but it is easy for me to imagine that she knows now and that she knew even then what I am. It is surely paranoid delusion to imagine that she knew the truth behind my words, for how could she know? Telling lies, I begin to suspect them from others. If I can lie to my wife, is it inconceivable that she could lie to me when she pretends to believe my lies? If my lies were so transparent, they would hardly be lies and I would be laid bare and she would be the monster for not fleeing from me. No, she is innocent and I am a liar.

I walk to the waters edge. I stand on the outcropping of rock on which I stood with my brother that summer. I look into the water. A frog leaps and the ripples issue outwards in every expanding wavelets that slowly die on the rocks at the shore. Except the waves from that summer never die and then continue to emanate out not from the lake but from me. In the lies I continue to tell. My wife begins to wakes and I lie to her again. I ask her to come see the sunrise over the lake and as I do I reach into my pack and pull out the revolver. The metal is cool and heavy in mind hands and the weight reminds me of its seriousness. I don’t let Emma see the weapon as I tuck it into my belt and pull my jacket over the handle.
She stretches. She yawns. She comes to stand next to me on the ledge overhanging the lake. We both seem to focus on a point off in the distance rather than the memory directly below us. I know it is down there though.

“This is where my brother shot himself. He was standing here, leaning over the water, and when he died and his body went limp, he fell forward into the water. If you look over the edge of this rock, you can see that it is one of the deepest parts of the lake here. See where the water is the darkest?” I ask her, pointing just over the edge of the rock outcropping. She leans over to look and I pull the revolver from under my jacket. I had loaded only two bullets.

“Yeah, I see it; it’s very dark,” she says, her attention still focused on the water. I have the pistol out now and I am ready. I bring it higher—there is no need to aim at this distance—and I ready myself for the truth. I am now behind her, if only by a little, and I can see the back of her head as she peered into the deepness.

I step to the edge of the abyss from which there can be no redemption and I hurled death into the lake. I am a liar, the little splash said just before the pistol sank out of sight. Emma jumps back, startled.

“Was that a gun?” she said with a start, coming back from the edge to look at me.

“Yeah, it was the pistol my brother used to kill himself. I thought throwing it into the lake would be a way of finding closure for his death. I have always blamed myself for his suicide, in some way, you know.”

“Oh, I see. But you know it wasn’t your fault. Well, you startled me. I am going to go get the fire going and make some coffee.” My wife goes to tend the fire and I stayed. Now I gaze into the deepness and I see myself reflected in the water, my visage dark and wavering. But now I am steady. I have sunk the truth beneath that mirror surface and all that remains is the lie.

“Let’s just go home, Em. I wanted to come here to forget and I think it would be best if we just left now, before I have a chance to dwell on it,” I lied to her again. “And I know what you said is true, and this helped me realize it. It wasn’t my fault,”—my final lie.

Madness and Genius Part 1

I know that this is not news or relevant, but something I saw set me to thinking about it again today. There was a boy who found his high school math classes too easy. He was placed in a more advanced class in his sophomore year of high school, but he quickly mastered that material as well. After taking a required English course in summer school, he graduated high school two years early and was accepted to Harvard at the age of 16. While at Harvard he studied math, notably as a student under the eminent logician Willard Quine. He scored at the top of Quine's class, earning a 98.6% grade in the course. After Harvard, this young man when on to earn a master's degree and PhD from The University of Michigan in the field of mathematics.

His specialty was a branch of complex analysis known as geometric function theory. "I would guess that maybe 10 or 12 people in the country understood or appreciated it," said Maxwell O. Reade, a retired math professor who served on his dissertation committee. He would publish several more papers on advanced mathematics while teaching undergraduate courses at The University of Michigan. This man next became an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of California Berkely in the fall of 1967.

Do you know who this man was? Perhaps you do from the short biography that I have provided. Most mathematicians aren't well known outside academic circles, but this man would become very well known in the popular culture, but not for his breakthroughs in mathematics. He became famous by mailing letter bombs. He was who the FBI and media outlets dubbed "The Unabomber". His murders stretched over a span of two decades and they were accompanied by a manifesto to which he wanted to draw attention. He promised an end to his killings if his manifesto was published in a major newspaper, and the Department of Justice and two major newspapers complied.

You can find his manifesto on the internet if you would like to read it. He wrote it on a typewriter in a primitive shack in rural Montana, yet it is lucid, cogent, free of grammatical and spelling errors, and chilling in its message. Which is more frightening, the fact that this man killed to advance the ideology of this manifesto or the thoughts themselves that went into the creation of the manifesto? Kaczynski paints a picture of a looming technological dystopia that seems more real with every passing year. Did he kill individuals in airlines, the computer industry, and universities to strike out directly at that techno-corporate system or did he do so simply to draw attention to the message he wanted to braodcast in his manifesto? My initial belief was the former, but I was puzzled by the utter futility of that act. Kacynski should know better than anyone that the people he bombed represent only an astronomically small portion of the power structure and that his murders would not have any real effect, even if those individuals couldn't be easily replaced within the techno-social machine. Thus I am forced to conclude that he killed those symbolic targets not for any direct damage that such murders would do to the system he opposed, but rather to cause people to take notice and to actually read his manifesto. To me, this conclusion makes his actions even more evil and depraved than if he had killed those men to more directly undermine the system he opposed.

In either case, he has failed. His ideas did not gain traction (who really thought they would?) and he engendered no movements of social or technological change. His predictions are slowly coming true as our society becomes increasingly technological and our lives more firmly under the control of "machines" (using the word in both the literal and metaphoric senses) and divorces from our basic humanity.

I do not share Kacynski's views on how to solve the world's problems. Absolutely not. A total rejection of technology is neither sensible nor possible. And using murders to draw attention to a political ideology is abhorant. Seeing people as cogs in a machine, or numbers in a math problem, all divorced of their humanity, is something we would expect from Kacynski's enemies, and it undermines his basic message when he resorts to such base expressions of violence to promote his text. Beyond those two very important objections, Kacynski was wrong to kill because it worked against him in a war for public support. He wanted support for his message but as long as the author of that message is a serial killer, no one will pay it heed. Society has shunned him and his ideas, and rightly so.

Counterinsurgency operations fail if they do not win the hearts and minds of the local populations that support the rebels. We have learned this truism in Malaya, Vietnam, and now Iraq. In this case though, the insurgency has failed because it did not win the support of the population. Campaigns are fought for public support now, in modern democracies when the truth is an artificial construction of a corporate machine. The great masses of people, living off easy answers and quick news clips can be persuaded of anything. Who is the Axis of Evil this year? Who hates freedom now? A king would have difficulty ruling because when public opinion turns against him, especially in a federalist republic such as ours, his power evaporates. But an oligarchy composed of technocrats, monied politicians, media outlets, corporate players, and carefully controlled facemen -- that is the machinery that can hold sway over millions by telling them what to think, feel, buy, vote, and accept as the truth.

Contrary to Kacynski's vile tactics as a serial killer, to compete in this arena one needs to move within this power structure either as a component of it or a clever manipulator or a revolutionary innovator. Muhammad Yunus is one such man. He saw an enormous problem--crushing and desperate poverty suffered by hundreds of millions--and he took steps to solve this problem. He did it by reinventing the capitalist system in a more human and equitable way. He fought back against the evil machinary that Kacynski saw but he did so in a moral, heroic, and commendable way. Read his Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus

Muhammad Yunus is one example of how to change the world for the better. The man is without a doubt my personal hero. My earliest blog entries make mention of levers and fulcrums to move the world, and indeed Dr. Yunus found his fulcrum point. I will not write in this blog about my lever or fulcrum point, but I will leave you with an MIT lecture by Dr. Yunus. Enjoy:
http://mitworld.mit.edu/stream/287/

Education is Freedom

I installed a counter on this blog today and also posted the URL on my Facebook page. I noticed that I have some new visitors tonight and you may be English speakers. Since the two previous posts were both in Spanish, I thought that I should return to English for a while so that you were not put off by the my use of Spanish.

Tonight I would like to write about a favorite quotation from one of my favorite thinkers from premoden times: Cicero. We all know Cicero, the Roman philosopher, I am sure. One of Rome's greatest orators, politicians, statesmen and philosophers he was a towering intellect whose insights into life have weathered the decay of centuries and retain their significance even now. The quotation (translated to English because I don't read Latin) is as follows:

"The purpose of education is to free the student from the tyranny of the present."

This rings true in several ways. First, education is a way to look beyond our present circumstances and open our minds to greater possibilities. It is easy to become trapped in our own personal situations, in our own narrow limits of thought and opinion about the world around us, and grow ignorant of the wider world. Learn about another culture and you enrich your own just that much. Learn to speak another language and your mind and your view of the world opens up not only because you can communicate with more people but the act of learning a new tongue frees the mind from its linguistic and cognitive bondage as new ideas can be thought. As we learn new languages, learn math or physics that allows a greater understanding of the physical world, and learn history that provides us with a clearer picture of the human world, as we do these things our minds break free from the tyranny of the present and expand into the multitudinous possibilities of the intellect. This is the first power of education.

I can imagine other worlds. I can imagine my life different than it is now. I can imagine ways to change my life and to change our world. I would not be capable of such imagination without the education to formulate such theories. Not all education is equal and it is the proper education in critical thinking, imagination and historical perspective that provides us with the clearest lens to other possibilities. This is the first way in which we can interpret the quotation, as a sort of freedom of the imagination.

The second way that we can interpret the quotation is a more practical application of education to material freedom. If I hold a masters degree in finance, or a la3 degree, I will have more financial freedom, I will have a greater capability to find a job, I will have more power over my fellow man and thus greater freedom to act on my will. Education, in our modern society is the way to attain anything we want. Those who cannot read are shut off from many of the avenues of our modern society and unable to participate fully in the social fabric that surrounds them. Those who don't graduate high school have extremely limited employment prospects. Those who attend college and graduate study choose their own path in life and attain the freedom to chose not only the benefits they will derive from society but the effect they will have on it. Do you want to earn $100,000 per year? Go to law school or get an business degree. Do you want to save people's lives? Make it through medical school and become a doctor. In either case, our present circumstance, with less education, is one of restriction and enslavement, enslaved by the bonds of our own ignorance. It is through education that we break free.

I see the present as not an end state but as an ever present beginning and I believe it healthy to fix our gaze on the future. I derive a great deal of joy from the acts both of learning and of teaching. I have much to learn myself, as we all do, but there are few pleasures more pure than inspiring others to new intellectual heights and provoking their minds to gain new understanding.

Education and the quality of education is most often what separate one social group from another or one person from another now in this increasingly modern world. And our families and their influence on our attitudes toward education determine, to a large degree how successful we are breaking free from the tyranny of the present. I have seen this again and again during my time in education. The attitudes of the student and his or her family are the largest determiners in his or her success in school. Some choose to remain ignorant and will never succeed, no matter how intelligent they may be. Others choose to embrace education, to work hard and to break free from the slavery of their ignorance. It is very much a choice.

Finally, another way to read the quotation, or at least a corollary that adds an interesting twist. It is through education, both of himself and of others, that Cicero truly broke free of the tyranny of his present. He now continues to educate us more than two thousand years in the future and has attained a sort of immortality. Very few of us will be able to say the same in two thousand years as the ravages of time will have washed our memories from the sands of time.

As a closing thought, for all those who are still in school: remember why you are there. You are there to learn. To learn math, to learn history, to learn new languages, to learn science, to learn new ways of thinking and new possibilities. You are there to grow and become better people and it is not just a place to pass the time or have fun. Looking back later in life, you will appreciate it more, but then it will be too late. Heed my words now, and free yourselves from the tyranny of the present.

La Rosa

"La rosa"

La rosa,
la inmarcesible rosa que no canto,
la que es peso y fragancia,
la del negro jardín en la alta noche,
la de cualquier jardín y cualquier tarde,
la rosa que resurge de la tenue
ceniza por el arte de la alquimia,
la rosa de los persas y de Ariosto,
la que siempre está sola,
la que siempre es la rosa de las rosas,
la joven flor platónica,
la ardiente y ciega rosa que no canto,
la rosa inalcanzable.

Todos los idiomas son sistemas simbológicos en los cuales una marca en un papel o un patrón de sonidos representa un objeto en el mundo real, una acción o una idea. Nuestras mentes humanas también funcionan así, con una compleja interacción entre metáforas. Metáforas son el lenguaje silente de nuestras pensamientos. No entendemos el mundo en forma directa sino por medio de metáforas que formamos por nuestra experiencia y que expresamos con otras metáforas (palabras). ¿Qué es una rosa? No somos capaz de relatar lo que es Rosa sin usar palabras y no somos capaz de usar palabras sin caer en una serie de metáforas que nacen de experiencia. Eso es la esencia de la poesía. La poesía es una forma de literatura que concentra las metáforas de nuestras palabras y deja al lado todo lo que es extra. Nos deja con símbolos potentes, ideas y imágenes que surgen de una colección de letras ordenados en versos. En su imitación de pensamiento y voz, la poesía se vuelve una representación no solo de la idea en la página sino la mente del poeta mismo. Todos los grandes poetas y esacritores saben su rol pero siempre me fascina el poeta y cuentista argentino que eleva el papel del metáfora enuna manera tan inescapable. Jorge Luis Borges es conocido como un escritor quién juega con varias metáforas repetidas y inolvidables como la espada, el espejo, la moneda, el libro, la luna, el tigre y la rosa. Tienen un valor personal para Borges pero también juegan un rol en el lenguaje literaria que quiso crear, muy con propósito.

En este poema, muy Borgesiano, tenemos un intento a nombrar algo—la rosa. El poema entero es una larga serie de fragmentos—siempre el sujeto de la oración sin la predicado. Cada verso empieza con el artículo definido como si otro intento a nombrar la rosa, a definarla de nuevamente. La lista de atributos, la inabilidad de llegar a una resolución, la falta de movimiento en el poema establecen que la rosa es más allá que su abilidad de describir—es “la rosa inalcanzable” (13). Esa tema de una cosa “inalcanzable” empieza en el primer verso con el frase “que no canto” y sigue hasta el final.

Puede ser inalcanzable pero no menos real o potente aunque sea fuera nuestra control/entendimiento. Borges escribe que “la inmarcesible rosa [...] que es peso fraganncia” (2,3) , es decir, que es existente y real. Pero al mismo tiempo es cualquier rosa de cualquier jardín y de cualquier noche (5) y de ser cualquier rosa, se convierte en ser “la rosa”. Eso es la esencia del símbolo, que las letras r-o-s-a son la rosa, todas las rosas y que cada rosa, aunque único, es a la misma vez todas las rosas que en la historia hemos guardado en nuestra memoria colectiva. La historia y la memoria colectiva nunca son lejos del poesía de Borges y aquí entra con el verso, “la rosa de los persas y de Ariosto,” (8). Esta rosa, o esta docena de rosas, son ligadas por una cadena de memoria, metáfora y tradición a las flores que sostenían un persos o un griego—no, el griego, Ariosto.

Borges, en verso once, llama la rosa, “la joven flor platónica,” y con esa palabra platónica no quiere negar el amor romántico—para nada—quiere establecer su concepto de la rosa eterna como un ideal platónico, como las formas de Platón. La rosa es perfecta porque encontramos su perfeccción en nuestro concepto de la rosa que se representa por esa flor y porque es “la rosa que resurge de la tenue/ ceniza por el arte de la alquimia,” (6-7) cuando entendemos que la alquimia no es solo las ciencias botánicas sino nuestra imaginación y amor. Borges usa la palabra “joven” en conjunto con “platónico” porque cada vez que usamos la rosa es joven de nuevo, es la el objeto de la metáfora que queremos expresar, es nuestro amor, nuestro deseo que damos a luz en este mensaje vivo y perfecto.

Todo el significado del poema, de la historia de la rosa, de las experiencias personales con rosas entre amantes, está cargado en la rosa. Dar una rosa no es el acto de dar una flor sino expresar una emoción llevado por esa metáfora viva, anciana y siempre joven. La rosa de Borges es la rosa de Ariosto es mi rosa y la tuya. Todo que decimos y todo que hacemos sirven para expresar ese nudo de metáforas (y emociones) que forma nuestras mentes y con la rosa expresamos más que meras palabras pueden decir. Te dejo con el misterio de la rosa y de mi metáfora tenue y ardiente.

El desastre en Haiti

La crisis en Haiti es más atrás de nuestra comprensión. Ahora dicen que han enterrado más que setenta mil personas y estiman que puedan ser más que doscientos mil muertos en total. Es una tragedia tanto afuera de mi la experiencia de nosotros que no llegamos a imaginar ni el mínimo parte de lo que está pasando al pueblo haitiano.

Sería facil rendirnos a un cierto fatalismo cuando estamos enfrentados con tales. El mundo no es justo y no hay una serie de reglas cósmicas que dictan lo que la naturaleza debe hacer para conformar con nuestra idea de justicia, egaldad o humanidad. Al contrario, la naturaleza es insentaz e inhumano. No podemos decir que "no le importa" una vida humana porque al decirlo, el frase "importar" implica que la naturaleza puede "importar". No siente, no piensa y no es más que una cadena de eventos que tienen lugar en un ámbito frío y calculado, afuera del alcanze de nuestra tendencia de antromorfizar todo. En el caso de Haiti, tenemos una intersección de factores -- la pobreza extra con un desastre natural -- y el producto es la muerte en una escala impensable. Es dificil evitir el pensamiento que no importamos. Nuestras vidas son fugaces y débiles llamas en fósforos que se apagan tan rápidamente que el universo no nos hace caso (y de nuevo, antropomorfizo al universo). Más que nuestra vidas individuos, nuestras naciones también pueden desaparecer al instante. Haiti va a quedar pero su gobierno está en ruinas, mucha de la infrastructura del país está destruida y este terremoto representa un evento cultural que cambiará el carácter nacional por muchas décadas.

¿Qué podemos hacer? Los más ricos entre nosotros podemos donar dinero (y los menos ricos pueden donar menos dinero) pero, ¿qué podemos realmente hacer? La pregunta es una que siempre me ha estorbado. Vivimos en un mundo injusto y cruel, debido de las acciones de los hombres y también los desastres naturales. Vivimos en tal mundo y algunos de nosotros nos sentamos impotente cuando no observamos nuestro efecto en el mundo. Quiero ser Superman. Quiero ser un héroe con poderes increíbles y un coraje indominable. Pero no lo soy. No puedo hacer nada más que ver las escenas de la muerte en la televisión. Las guerras en Afghanistán y Irak, la violencia en Colombia, el esclavitudad en India y Tailandia, los masacres en Sudán y todo lo demás es demasiado para mí y para ti.

La Cruz Roja está en Haiti y está salvando miles de vidas. La ONU está en Haiti también y el ejército estadounidense, pero es otra cosa. Equipos de rescate de diversos paises y ciudades han viajado a Haiti para colaborar y salvar vidas. Mi visión de algo que puede hacer bien es una red sin un nexus central que cuentan con muchos millones de individuos. Los individuos serían ligados el uno al otro con una ideología y una visión unificada pero con la libertad y la abilidad de actuar en concierto. Diez personas aisladas no son nada, pero mil personas, cada uno con sus recursos y talentos, todas organizadas en una sociedad devotado al mismo objetivo, pueden ser formidables.

Varias religiones representan la mejor representación de esta visión. Tienen millones de integrantes que compartan una doctrina y quienes a menudo actuan juntos. Pero existe el problema del autoritismo, la superstición y las limitaciones epistimológicas en todas las instituciones religiosas (es decir, que la Iglesia Católica o una se ta de Islam está limitado por sus propias definiciones y estructuras). Necesitamos algo más. Necesitamos una ONU sin las naciones y sin la burucracias. Necesitamos una Cruz Roja que hacen más que ayuda a los víctimas de guerras y desastres naturales. Necesitamos un organización que cambia el mundo en todas maneras. No podemos evitir terremotos en si mismos, pero con el plan adecuado podemos aliviar el sufrimiento humano. Espero que yo pudiera ayudar más en este momento pero no puedo. Entonces, voy a compartir contigo mi plan de un mejor mundo y cómo convertirlo en una realidad. Sígame, mientras hacemos el camino dorado... mientras hacemos el muerte-verde.

Mis pensamientos y mis esperanzas van a la gente afectada por la tragedia en Haiti.