Attic

An attic can be just a storage room, an empty space, a beautiful room, or even a whole flat.

Nowadays in Spain people are talking about housing. Some media use a silly saying or expression from young people to discredit the protesters — but that is misleading. It is looking for anything to point at and ridicule, to discredit.

As with many things, actions can be taken within the limits of the law but remain highly debatable on moral grounds — as when politicians use taxpayers' money to bail out banks with no requirement to pay it back. As the saying goes: they socialise the losses, but keep the profits private.

In Madrid, the mayor sold public housing built with taxpayers' money — housing where people were living — to private real estate companies. They can argue they needed money or had loans to repay, but when your administrator sells off your assets, they are not managing your goods well. How can you choose to manage public goods by handing them to people who believe the state should shrink? That is the school of reducing the state. And the issue behind it is the greed of private companies. Housing — like health, education, and security — becomes something to invest in and extract dividends from, rather than something whose primary purpose is to serve people.

Trap

There seems to be a trap in life. Humans are the species that builds societies, systems, and technology — and yet it is also the species that restricts its own freedom of movement across the planet and requires money to access the resources the planet provides.

This is because of private property, and it makes its influence felt in the development of human societies. It is ironic, then, that private property both helps develop human society and creates restrictions that lead to inequality. But inequality itself is not the problem — the problem is extreme inequality, or worse, a situation where someone can accumulate enough wealth for dozens of lifetimes whilst many people cannot secure enough for a single year. And what leads to this is not private property in itself — it is just a tool. The real problem is hubris, the failure to follow the Golden Rule, individualism, and the absence of empathy.

The trap is not private property. The trap is not technology. The trap is believing that changing the system will change the person. It will not. Only morality does that. We must follow laws to live in society — but for a brotherhood, we must follow good morals and principles.

Promesa

Una promesa puede hacerse hacia otra persona, o hacia un ente —como en el caso de quienes hacen promesas a santos—. Pero en el fondo es como trasladar a alguien una promesa hecha a uno mismo. Y claro está, la promesa al yo más pequeño. Pienso que incluso las promesas a otras personas son, en el fondo, promesas contigo mismo —porque eres tú quien se compromete a realizar, completar o lograr algo—.

Y puede que romper una promesa con uno mismo sea más fácil que romperla con otra persona, por el sentimiento de compromiso que genera tener a alguien más implicado. Como si uno pudiera excusarse ante sí mismo con más facilidad. Con otra persona, en cambio, no es del todo seguro que funcione así —y según tus principios y valores, te será más difícil no cumplir—.

Una promesa, para su cumplimiento, está entonces ligada a los principios y valores de la persona. Entre esos valores están la disciplina, la coherencia y la integridad —y podemos también llegar al valor principal de tratar a los demás como nos gustaría ser tratados—. Y al propósito de amar, servir y buscar la verdad. Por ello es importante sentar los cimientos en la educación desde la infancia, para facilitar el cumplimiento de las promesas que se hagan a lo largo de la vida.

Taberna

¿Por qué se crearon las tabernas? Pienso que de alguna forma las distintas mutaciones terminaron en bares, salones de baile, salones de juego, salones de citas. Pero, ¿cuál sería el origen?

¿Un lugar para comer, beber, jugar? Tal vez un poco de todo: un lugar donde reunirte con amistades u otras personas ajenas a quienes conviven en la misma morada. El origen podría estar entonces en la necesidad de relacionarse con otras personas con fines de ocio. Luego el lugar pudo albergar razones distintas al ocio —rebelión, trabajo, negocios—, o al menos cosas más cercanas a él que al ocio puro.

¿Serán las tabernas la mayor distracción de las personas de los siglos pasados, así como ahora pueden serlo los dispositivos electrónicos? Y aún así hubo invenciones y descubrimientos. ¿Quiere esto decir que no estamos tan perdidos como puede parecer —en el sentido de que tengamos menos descubrimientos e invenciones por estar más distraídos—? Algunos sucumbirán y morirán distraídos, pero seguramente habrá quien resulte inmune o desarrolle inmunidad. Siempre habrá quien no le gusten las tabernas, o se canse de los dispositivos electrónicos, o de la distracción que surja en cada época.

Sneeze

It is funny how cultures have beliefs and sayings — such as the idea that when someone sneezes, it is because someone else is talking about them. Or is it thinking about them? I do not remember exactly, nor do I remember where those sayings come from or whether they appear in every culture.

I think they probably do appear in every culture. And we share some of those sayings across different cultures.

That reminds me that there are experiments showing that animals transfer knowledge to their descendants — but also that knowledge is transferred through social contact alone. Those sayings are like pieces of archaeology that reveal links between cultures sharing similar beliefs. We must also remain open to the possibility that both cultures developed those beliefs independently. In that case, without more information to take into account, we have a fifty-fifty split.

We can go much further, though, when we consider that the whole species sneezes — and that other species share the same or similar behaviour. That also leads us to wonder about both possibilities: did the sneezing mechanism develop independently across species, or does it point to a common ancestry?

Live

How to live? Why to live? Those are questions every person asks themselves, explicitly or implicitly. Philosophers and thinkers have had to grapple with them. I do not remember discussing them in class — and I did study philosophy at secondary school. That makes me think we need more philosophy in the classroom.

Viktor Frankl comes to mind because of his book Man's Search for Meaning. And other books such as the Bible. But also short videos where these questions are touched on. Mujica is one of our more recent figures who talked about how to live — about not wasting time on things, and spending it instead on people and relationships.

That reminds me of some TED Talks that mentioned how people who live longer and happier lives tend to have strong, meaningful relationships.

We are experiential beings. We can live through different struggles — and yet even people who grow up in the middle of a war can have happy moments. It is also our instinct to live, to fight for living. Only when you are suffering and depressed might you seriously think about ending it — but even in those moments there may be hope, anger, love... something that keeps you wanting to live. You can have an explicit purpose, or not — because purpose can also be implicit in the way you live.

Japón

Japón es un país que tiene su encanto e influencia en la cultura hispánica. De lo poco que sé, japoneses migraron a Latinoamérica —principalmente a Perú—, y aspectos de su cultura los hemos visto en series y animes.

Japón es conocido por los terremotos y por la disciplina de sus ciudadanos. Al ser una de las culturas más aisladas respecto al entorno mediterráneo, se vieron menos influenciados por estar menos conectados. No creo que tengan religiones monoteístas como las de América, Europa y África.

Japón y algunos de sus vecinos pueden ser de los grupos humanos menos mezclados, pero incluso ellos comparten ancestros comunes con el resto. Después de todos estos siglos, todos debemos ser descendientes de un Abraham, o de Adán y Eva —quienes fueran estos—, si hay algo de verdad en dichas historias.

Creo que Japón es un referente en el desarrollo de una moralidad no ligada a dioses. Y esto es importante en el estudio filosófico que todo habitante de este planeta debería tener como parte de conocerse a sí mismo y para construir una sociedad de hermandad: hay que conocerte a ti mismo y a tu hermano.