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Published: Sunday, June 12, 2005
We can only support the new approach of Chavez and Lula for Latin America Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2011 13:03:08 -0500 I wish to thank Kenneth Tellis for his comments about modern society. His concerns are valid and solutions may only come from a broad study of reality. This is quite difficult, for even Academia belongs to same market trends. Information is so profuse that discerning minds may find hard to go the right path. The new social philosophy that should clarify things for us must necessarily include the new sciences, specially neuroscience and molecular biology. Otherwise, we are talking from old paradigms, theories and even dogmas that fit no more. One fact is basic: We are still tribal animals and our brain is programmed to function through emotional links to family and tribe. We have a limbic, emotional brain which is dependent of primitive circuits. It is false that "civilization" has given form to our aesthetic or ethical vision. One can say, on the contrary, as Mr. Tellis points out, that present civilized life seems to go outside limits. Our mental well-being and also our whole biological health depend -- this we know through present-day molecular biology -- in keeping a biochemical equilibrium that relates to a total of more than two million molecules of proteins in each cell. These proteins belong to 90.000 different types and each cell specializes in some of these types. Abuse in any form may cause disarray and disease. Primitive tribes achieved some sort of equilibrium that allowed them to survive for millions of years ... Australian aborigines and Melanesians of the Pacific islands survived almost without change for about fifty thousand years. During a stay of five years, I studied the behavior and the culture of some of these people ... I found out that aborigines had a rich and happy life through the sharing of an aesthetic vision of things. They enjoyed nature and one another ... they shared and laughed and each day seemed to be a festivity ... until civilization came about, with booze, junk-food and the likes. Our present-day modern society has made it hard to survive after a period of only two centuries. We can not preach a return to the past, but we can revive this sense of tribal or communal life, this search for equilibrium and balance in our daily lives, the revolutionary vision that confronts the imposed reality of disinformation.
Perhaps in the future, anthropological engineering will allow the creation of a society that mixes modern technology and tribalism. By the way, this is the aim of the poor people cooperatives of Brazil, the Sem Terra, (modernidad en la tribalidad) that have organized themselves to achieve a healthy communal life. There are a few examples of this new approach around the world, in the communal life of Island, or the technological but cooperativist society of Singapore ... and especially in the prosperous cooperatives of Chinese villagers. Capitalism, without limitations, as proclaimed by the US and European countries, is producing a terrible malaise not only in the inner cities but in the process of exceeding consumption of fossil fuels, water and other resources, while, at the same time, half the global population is being forced to more poverty. Oscar Romero was abandoned by the former Pope and then killed by the military ... the Opus Dei faction sanctioned his death. This sect comes from the Spanish Civil War and they really hate anything that smells of socialism or communism. As the Chinese Premier says, communism is only a phase in the organization of the Chinese society ... we are working now to make the people rich because it is in the interest of the people.
The present day-chant of the Bush administration of 'freedom, freedom, freedom' seems intended not only to obscure the real interests of the corporations but may obscure the prospective of Academia in order to establish what the real world needs to avoid present dangers. We are facing programmed or un-programmed extinction in a very short time. Perhaps in the next 25 years, the shortage of water and fossil fuels may trigger the death of hundreds or thousands of millions. This is only a generation away! We can only support the new approach of Chavez and Lula for Latin America. Through liberal capitalism, Latin America managed to obtain the dubious achievement of having half its population in absolute poverty. Maybe, through a Bolivarian Revolution we may find better ways to cooperate among ourselves and avoid the regimes of organized corruption that have caused such misery. Pompeyo Andrade Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM Yahoo! Groups Links
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