Too much information, less ponderation

There are some things that must be said again. It's hard to make yourself be understood sometimes, right? Sometimes you may wonder if the world is upside down or if it was always this way. You may think you're thinking arrogantly, committing a crime thought, when you not only realize that several people are extremely stupid as well as you realize that they are really this way. All your dreams of a better world are broken into pieces. Should then we stop dreaming and aiming to build a new world?

No. The question is that we have to ponder about our and others' attitudes. And pondering is something that people seem to have forgotten or never seen on the pages of a dictionary. We see duality in almost everything, everywhere. Maybe this is a reflexion of our laziness or even incapacity or fear to think on our own.

We live in a time that people have a waterfall of information over the internet but they are still alienated to what they see on TV or read on newspapers and magazines. Are journalists philosophers, gods of truth? Is journalism that trustworthy people think it is? Should we stop believing them? No, as long as pay close attention to their intentions and ponder of the facts they present. Maybe this lack of ethics in journalism reflects a society that have a poor education and take every headline as a irrefutable truth. The journalists are their conductors.

People may behave in an arrogant way just because they read some books, specially some written by respected worldwide philosophers. People may read but not catch the essence. You also may haven't read a book in your whole life and be as intelligent as someone graduated in philosophy. Arrogance is nothing but a reflection of someone that relies on people's view of himself, of a society that is too concerned in what you seem to be, not in what you really are, think and feel. Should then we stop concerning of what people may think of us? Not exactly. Let's ponder!

We are living in a time that we have chew information for us just assume them as correct. What's wrong and what's right? Who said that and what was their intention? It was for everybody's good or some people good? We should start thinking not only about the world but mainly about ourselves. Why is self-criticism seen as something negative, as if the one who practices this exercises doesn't love himself? Being humble became a sin? Why do we have to always show to people that we born to impress them?

I insist: we have to ponder of everything and the concepts of everything: right, wrong, good, evil, etc. People are behaving mechanically, like computers. They download packages of ideologies and philosophies. They don't think of it, they don't contest the controversies. They are unable to think independently and dare to think differently. They don't have the guts to see inconvenient truths and give up of their blind and comfortable passions. They are too concerned about their image face to the society even when they say they aren't.

And finally they are used to complain about the world they are living today. Blind ones. They can't notice that the world is the “shit” they say it became because people are too concerned in impressing others. If they could think, if they could ponder, maybe we could live in a better world.

The chic tragedy

Everything's image. We know beauty calls attention and everybody wants to feel pretty. If it wasn't for that, it wouldn't make sense taking a shower, brushing the hair, clipping the fingernails, dressing clean clothes, working out, etc. It's not only a matter of health, but is a matter of esthetic too. There's no problem in wishing to feel prettier or feeling attraction for what's beautiful; the problem is when someone has the beauty as its single talent, or when the beauty is offensive for people who are (or think they are) ugly due to their inferiority complex and laziness to take care of their appearance.

The attraction to the beauty is not only resumed to the physical of some people, but for the beauty in general. It includes richness and power too. Some of the recent tragedies have shown how much people are obsessed by the triad beauty-richness-power. We can talk about two kinds of TV shows very successful in Brazil: soap operas and reality shows. The competitors of a reality show are young, rich and pretty – the ideal standard of beauty – and the audience are, usually, the contrary of them. The soap operas and even the Brazilian literature focus, mainly, on a bourgeoisie family dramas.

Now speaking of an issue that the Brazilian media loves to sell (tragedies) even of the false people's commotion that pretend sadness to hide their fixation for them, we have several examples of what can be called “the chic tragedy”.

The case of Isabela Nardoni girl would have caused that national commotion if she wasn't a pretty girl from a middle class family? What it would be if she was a black, not very pretty and daughter of a poor family, thrown from a flagstone of the slum house, would she have caused similar commotion? Why the “handsome beggar” from Curitiba could mobilize the social networks to localize his family and “touched” these people due to his problems with drugs? Why the several ugly, dirty, drugged and drunk beggars that sleep in the streets couldn't touch these people so “human” of the social networks if it is some much easier to find them even in small cities? Why is it so common to see an U18 boy being treated as a condemned criminal in national network while he is just alleged, specially if he is black and poor? Why doesn't it exist a pre-condenation of the media when the criminal is a TV host that refuses to do the breathalyser test, when a group of young boys set fire to a indigenous man, or when middle class teenagers rape a girl? Why the violence against homosexuals causes revolt on the social networks only when the violated guy are handsome and masculine, while the ugly and queer one is a reason of laugh even for the gays?

And what about in the international level, would the 9/11 attacks have the traditional worldwide morbid annual highlight from the media if they had happened in a country that isn't very expressive economical and culturally in global level like Somalia? Why does the hurricane Sandy called so much attention of the international and Brazilian media if similar bigger and worse tragedies like this are used to happen every year in Southeast Asia? Why the recent shooting in an American school “touched” so much the people worldwide? The Realengo school shooting didn't touch the world in the same way and there isn't a sick tradition in the international media of speaking of the anniversary of the tragedy every single year.

The fixation of the society goes much beyond of the physical beauty. Even their brotherhood is conditioned to it. The “chic tragedy” shows how the humanity feeling is selective: what involves pretty, rich and powerful people or things, touches; what involves ugly, poor and powerless people or things, doesn't touch or is conveniently ignored. The chic tragedy shows how much people can be superficial and futile, even when try their best to hide it due to their obsession for their image face to society. The chic tragedy shows us how the evil got banal and how the people are hypocrite when trying to pretend sadness when, actually they are sadist and nourish a real obsession for other's pain and failure?

The torturous act of thinking and loving

The supposed end of the world is coming. In about three weeks, there will be a true deluge of shared crap images on Facebook. There will be a deluge of worthless and sensationalist news reports establishing terror seeking for high TV ratings. And there will be religious bigots selling plots on Heaven, self-flagellating or even committing suicide. And in this atmosphere of chaos and bizarreness we could reflect a little about the human race.

What today's man changed faced to those from the Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Middle Age or Modern Age? Except for the development of the sciences and technology, maybe just a little in what concerns to civility. It may sound an exaggeration, but are we really more civilized, more critical, more intelligent?

Let's look around us. Is slavery really over or does it only changed the name to wage labor? Did we really acquired more political powers or are we being modeled by a culture that dictates how we should think and express ourselves? Does democracy really exist or is it just a fallacy because the population doesn't take part of politics and their single effective political power is voting? If we are rational, why do we consume by the necessity of having a succeed life instead of a good life? Why do we destroy the nature? Why do we see people starving, murdering, suffering and our maximum gesture is disguising pity and crying tears of vapor?

We are getting stupid, we are decaying, we are boiling down to and treating people as things, objects. The word “humanity” should be banned of the dictionaries by the group of the language control: it has a pejorative connotation due to its association to a specie that destroys nature, the other animals and themselves.

It lacks love to the world. It lacks courage to the world. It lacks respect to the world. It lacks the minimum of intelligent to feel besides their bellies to the world. I just would like to live in a world that worked properly and not where even the most basic thing – thinking and loving – the man haven't learned yet.

Alienation is a shelter

Study. Work. Create. Don't think. Get busy. It makes you feel well. Doing nothing is doing ill. It's not worthy thinking too much. Maybe this what they call destiny. And destiny is not written at all, but sketched and it's up to you erasing some lines and rewrite them. It demands much patience aiming a goal, an ideal that is converted to personal satisfaction and therefore, in a new sensation of happiness. But it lasts too much and it's tiring. So don't think. Study, work, create, keep the mind busy. Alienation is a shelter. This way you don't think bullshit. This way you don't keep self-destructing. This way you conserve that reserve of hopes that your anxiety and desperation have been consuming as long as you get older.

And I Will Kiss by Underworld by HollyBanks

Team Captain Planet

Then she got off of the car dressed elegantly, put her sunglasses and lit a cigar. But immediately the noise of the bus stopping at the bus station suddenly woke up her to her ordinary and banal reality. She had got a place to sit down doing so much effort and remained there, compressed between the window and the obese lady witch blubber worked as a pillow. It was what she had thought and her siren of morality sounded in her conscience, censoring her because the word “blubber” sounds extremely offensive when related to an obese person. She would call her “fat”, but the siren of morality would condemn her even more. She was getting pissed off of this constant self-vigilance that repressed her all the time, obligating her to think about the etymology of every single word in order to not be condemned as a terrible human being full of despicable prejudices.

She no longer felt free to be the one she was. She felt someone molded. In an informal conversation with an acquainted guy she met in college that called her attention, not only by his physic but also for having an “air” of cult person, she heard a subtle moral lesson when she used the word “blacken”. That dishearten her tremendously. She was told that blacken means “to turn black”, in a negative direct relation to black people. She wasn't racist, but the simple fact of unknowing the origin of the word blacken made her racist, even in a veiled way. It seemed that either she adapted herself to the politically correct, that she used to compare to 1984's George Orwell Thoughtcrime, or she would be obligated to be stoned with speeches of perfect world, flowered, full of fluffy and jumping rabbits with a rainbow in the background that only wasn't real because people full of prejudices like her existed on the Earth.

She decided to remain quiet. She would love to send that people to hell, but she preferred to behave morally and hold her swear words to her, therefore, who uses verbal violence loses the reason and blablabla. She felt no more free to swear!

The worse was that she was seeing lots of people taking part into this committed to a cause group. She didn't know if it was a kind of moral coercion or even a trend. Since some time she started observing that there's a way that dictates that all the human kind must be committed with a cause. How isn't committed or criticizes that this commitment is nothing but vanity, to seem more “intelligent” or “cult” or “awesome revolutionary” was considered less deserving of respect according to her observations. And the repulsion shown by the moralist speeches, by the look of disappointment or censor, by the hand in the mouth in an expression of incredulity or horror, by a supposed feeling of “pity”. She was out of this trend and it bothered her. It didn't mean she wanted to take part, but she noticed that people were turning out to be less spontaneous and even more unbearable and boring.

“But what if I the boring one is me? But what it if the problem is me?” she wondered all the time.

Maybe she was. When she tried to join this trend, she felt extremely artificial. Artificial laughs, artificial interests. She didn't feel free anymore to be herself, that one that used swear words sometimes, not too into the etymological meaning of the words, that used politically incorrect words and to not be committed in a cause or slave of her own vanity, desperate to show herself off, sound intelligent and socially responsible, in impressing by wishing a Nobel Prize. She wanted to be “prejudiced”, “ignorant”, “irresponsible” according to the committed guys, but she felt alone being herself. The new order was seeming to be the artificially in its more advanced stage. She used to consider herself as authentic, but it was ugly and something she should be ashamed for.

Anyway, she used to think too much as well and it was another thing that deeply bothered her. Then the best she could do was accepting, trying to ignore, once again compressed in the window by anyone with a large body mass index. Maybe she could fall asleep again upon an area of a great reserve of glycogen and dream of a world in witch people wasn't too neurotic related to language or in going out by flying as Marxist Captain Planet, crazy to save the world of the degradation caused by the capitalist bourgeoisie oppressor and make the heart signal with the hands.