Democracy 2.0

There is a #SpanishRevolution going on!!! Of course, it is directly inspired in the icelandic movement, but I'd say that the closest inspiration are the arab ones. Key feature --which I didn't find so important in the icelandic case-- are web 2.0: facebook and twitter. They brought together a bunch of very different people just because they we are upset with our corrupted politicians and the system they support.

A main claim against this movement is that the politicians say we don't know what we want. We organized independently of any political party or syndicate. We discovered that we don't need any underlying structure to express our claims. The politician power fears this enlightenment. The easiest thing is to say we don't know what we want.

I do know exactly what I want: I want a public social network over which I can interact with another people discussing initiatives which will democratically rise or fall. A public social network over which I can configure my vote about the many different issues of importance to my country, in real time, without the corrupt sense of delegating my will each 4 years in a party working for international enterprises. A public social network which would allow me to link my vote to a determined party or think tank or person if I desired to do so because I consider that I am not an expert on a topic, or because I considered that the topic is not so important to me, or because I just don't want to review the color of my opinion each and every minute and I trust enough a certain party or think tank or person. But also, if the people on which I delegate plans some dirty move, I want a public social network to remove my endorsement at the moment I desired, on real time and not just each 4 years.

This I call it a real (or at least more real) democracy.

A foreseeable claim against this is that we are not prepared for such a thing, or that the thing couldn't be kept under control... Just wait until you hear that. Doesn't this remind you of a fellow Mubarak talking to the Egyptian folks? O a gay --yeah, this one is on purpose-- called Franco preparing Spain for over 40 years for the simulacrum of a democracy? Don't let them play any tricks on us when they are scared and try to spread their fear. We have the technology to implement it, now we only need the will.

So up to here my point. I do know exactly what I want: not only regarding the 'how', but also have some thoughs on the 'what later'. And better on: each girl and boy, and elder and middle aged and whoever you can find tonight camping on the Spanish's squares does know what they want. Maybe they don't want the same as me, but they do know what. And we shall speak out loud and frighten the night.

Meeting on Tuesday the 19, at 15:30 in front of the Spanish embassy. Further meetings for Friday and Saturday! Keep looking at the hashtags:

#SpanishRevolution
#acampadasol
#acampadaberlin
#nolesvotes
#notenemosmiedo
#yeswecamp

Leave us kids alone!!

I can see it coming!

My (grand)father used to say that we should let the youth take over the institutions; not only hear their (our, as I'm young myself) opinions, but also grant them attention and interest.

Of course no one would ever hear my grandfather in this point, as wise and old as he was. And so, politics and similar advance so slowly, sometimes backwards. And I can see nowadays how people older than me is completely wrong in their points --they usually even mistake the debate-- and how they prevent me and others like me from making the world one that fancies us. It makes me feel kind of angry and frustrated.

But years will pass by and the older will become elder and latter slain, so my generation will at some point gain control over the world. Great done! But we will also grow older, as any rolling stone; and our ideas wouldn't be anymore those shaking the scene, but the ones taking firm hold of it. At this point, we shall also have grown into mad and irritated fellows. We have our 15 minutes and won't waste them. We won't let any 15-, 25-, 35-years-old lad with funny technological gadgets and up-to-date-fashion dresses ruin our moment. We will fight with ourselves to implement our aged ideas into a world that is not the same anymore, and thus we will condemn the youth to a living hell of frustration and ever repeating history and we won't understand that they are our only chance to make our desired chimera real.

Just to put it easy: we are fighting a Darth Vader, and the fighting itself is the easiest way to becoming one ourselves.

The heat in Granada

I saw ourselves as from a camera zooming from deep beneath our feet; from down on the boulevard with boiling, living people; smoke from the bars; a gleaming haze of yellow light which rises just over the first and a half floor; and the camera zooms out so close to the edge of the building as a sudden vertigo, and a further twisted life can be intuited in the corner of the sight where an also-gleaming darkness trembles in the aMazed streets fueling up the night. And so the zoom buzzes as it passes by, a shiver of our ears and the sky stays still just above our heads and Granada, so warm, so almost summer. So with short pants and t-shits and our browny skins so willing to touch themselves. So your eyes so your nice the blue behind. Each one a can of beer, alone in the terrace where I'll always love you. The heat is to sway our heads pleased and forever; long enough for the camera to stop, hold and fall, and make us shake this time with the violence of the ephemeral. And a sudden burden on my heart pulls hard from me and drags me down the terrace into a nightmare of mere night, of concrete vertigo of building edge when zooming my head down into the drugged hardness of the city paving.

I'll miss you so much Granada, your very essence.

The right paradigm?

To create jobs is seen as a great thing. People cheer about the idea that more jobs available would help us out of the financial crisis we're in. We humans have worked since the beginning of the history, usually because we had to. If we look back, little changed about this point. We need to work to have a life according to our times. We voluntarily become slaves of a system which will provide us with a house; heath insurance; safety against anarchy, radical islamism and other similar threats; a good school for our children so they are competitive enough to cope with their own lives and become slaves themselves.

Each time I read in the newspapers that someone created that much of new jobs... I can't see this as good news anymore.

Why is life like that? If we had actually achieved some progress we shouldn't need to become slaves of a sick system involved in wars and other forms of killing. I'm sure there's money enough in the world, welfare and resources enough so as to live without working for a few generations. It is again the distribution of these resources which matters to create the enslaving structure we live in.

I seek an ideal state I call the 'idle humanity' in which machines have taken charge of our works, and welfare and resources reach everyone for free. I wouldn't be afraid of this 'idle humanity'. No one works... so what? There's no need to... Even more, I assume higher unknown structures of 'work' would arise, in which enthusiastic humans would get involved voluntarily. No need for every one to participate: others could decide to die on a LSD orgy lasting many decades.

If you like my idea of 'idle humanity', good news are awaiting you! There are many countries in the world which work for such a picture to become real! As an instance, the amazing socialist government of the spanish kingdom has already over 20% unemployment. What an achieve in equality!!! Complementary measures such as not supporting students who just graduated were also implemented. Of course the remaining 80% work without any kind of motivation, just as in the 'idle humanity' model. They accept low (or even no) salaries, because money is not what matters in a society-to-be were everything is for free. The inspiration for work arises in these people in the same way as secondarily needs arose when the primarily ones were satisfied.

And so on, and so forth. This is progress, evolution.

火の鳥

火の鳥; or Phoenix, the fire bird, is a manga series by Osamu Tezuka, who is also known in Japan as the God of Manga. I know this manga since I was 15 or 16, but only few years later I have gotten two volumes of the series which formed the very basis of my philosophy of life.

I found these two books in a second-hand store. The books were hidden under a pile of other mangas and I remember they were kind of chip. When I bought them, I was already 20. Few weeks after that, I went to Germany for my first time (meaning also that I left Spain for my first time). I read the two books in only one afternoon and they impressed me deeply... I couldn't say how... It's rater a book that you read and operates a change in your engines... I can't explain it even today.

I kept on revisiting the books which, as a fire bird, rebirth over and over again each time I read them. They impress me further and always in new ways as if they were infinite. I always regretted that the work were unfinished (it seems like it was hard for Osamu Tezuka to write this comic, and also to release it). Even though, that two volumes work quite fine as a complete piece.

Yesterday, my very best friend Luchi gave me an unexpected and overwhelming birthday present. She went to Japan few months ago and brought for me two volumes of 火の鳥 in Japanese. I can't understand Japanese, but I don't care... the books are such a jewel!! She also said that there were two more volumes waiting in the store, so I should go back to Japan some day and get them myself. This puzzled me, since in the Spanish issue of the manga there are only two books. We resolved that maybe the Japanese edition had the same story within more books... not big deal.

Later on, I entered internet to check which differences existed among the issues of 火の鳥 in different languages, and there I saw it: Phoenix, the fire birth, in a never ending rebirth... It happens to have 12 volumes covering stories from a remote time (around 250 AD) up to a far future (2000 to 3000 AD)!!! I shut off the wikipedia and searched again for the book... only to find the same information. Again. For years, the two books which impressed me that deeply have had 10 more volumes awaiting for me to discover them!!!!!!! As I can't explain how these books influenced me, I can't explain either what a delight it is for me to find such a new never ending, never ended world!!!

On the road!

A post from the road: Budapest, a great city :D! Next destinations: Zagreb and Plivitce!

Cantona's Revolution

Let's see what happens :D!!