Posted by Mario J. Pinheiro | Filed under Education, Post-modern world, robots, sexual life
About the death of sex
21 Sunday Jul 2019
21 Sunday Jul 2019
21 Sunday Jul 2019
14 Sunday Jul 2019
Posted Alienation, Fiction, Nothingness, Short Stories
inLucas was sent by his mother in a mission: to rescue his father from the hands of malevolent people. From the region of Porto, north of Portugal, he was in the twenties and working in the textile industry, selling silk shirts. He was a men’s shirt seller, on a temporary basis as it is quite common nowadays since the definition of “unemployed” by the Bureau International du Travail in 1931.
”But, mom, where do I go looking for papa?” he asked with a disconsolate expression.
“Somebody kidnapped him, I am sure of that since his last letter. Do you remember the disappearance of Madeleine, the English girl? You should know that a lot of foreign people live in that region, it is dangerous.”
“Why do you assume that?”
“Son, read this letter: «Pilar, I will absent for two months working for Aasif, the son of Sammed, that old friend of mine since the times of civil war in Angola. We have to finish some business. Signed: Veimar», see?!”
Lucas had no authority to contest his mother, born in Vigo, Galicia, and, furthermore, he missed a lot his father, gone for a long time. Besides, he was unemployed at that moment. So, the next morning he took the road on his old and discolored scooter in direction of Algarve, crossing the country throughout less frequented roads. After all, it has just a moped, an old Lambretta, and had not much money for all investigative process. After a few hours, he felt exhausted and decided to stop on a dusty road. Also, at that moment, he already missed his girlfriend and called her on his mobile phone. She was his refuge.
“Hi, Carmen! Are you there?” but at the other side of the phone, he just listens the voice of another guy saying “…with a nice dark silk shirt we are definitively high…colors and properties of the silk…mêh…mêh”, the other voice was from Carmen but was almost imperceptible. He just wanted to reiterate her that he loved her so much but in vain. He hangs up.
Looking around, he noticed a wooden house on the horizon and decided to ask for some water. The owner, Alexis, was a rustic man and with a severe face had an annoying form of communication by whispering. After a moment of hesitation, he invited Lucas to seat on an old garden chair facing the barn door. In the farm, some girls were working in and out of the barn and their mechanical move raised his curiosity. Oddly, they had a concerned look at their faces, they wear not a happy face at all, but the first thought that occurred to him was that the girls were shy. He waved to them a look of sympathy and concern and then noticed that one of the girls was gorgeous. Suddenly he perceived that Alex felt uncomfortable with his sudden interest for the girls, possible for ´that´ girl and Alexis invited him to change and to sit down on a wooden chair.
“You know, we must be exigent toward the working girls. We can’t, unfortunately, thrust them” he shot after a moment of tension and with a rough tone of voice.
“Are you a community? A religious one?” he inquired, intrigued, but at the same time wishing to divert the question.
“Yes, we are a community, it is clear, no? But not a religious one. We are committed to change the world, we are like a Kibbutz, not in Israel, but here in Alentejo. We take care of ourselves, of our problems. We have cures for different afflictions. For depression we make a concoction containing an extraction of the vulva and the penis, mixing with pieces of a black lizard. In Ancient Egypt, they used this remedy, did you know?”
“I didn’t know, really. But I am curious about the way you live and I do need some shelter now. Can I stay this weekend?”
“Maybe, okay, okay. But with one condition: to labor in the fields next morning”.
After the exclusive interlude about their internal medicine, Alexis left apologetically. And again, suddenly, Lucas felt alone and hence he had again to call Carmen. On the other side, the phone reacted and the same voice was speaking “…but the Chinese used red silk shirts to give luck…” Okay, he disconnected the call. He was alone, he said to himself. Well, perhaps not, he believed in a surge of hope. He almost felt that one of the girls going out from the barn was interested somehow in him. At that moment, he needed some love, desperately.
That afternoon he was watering a tomato field when he saw ´that´ very attractive girl coming in his direction. What a ride. Luckily he had no signal inside that area.
“Hello! What are doing here? ” he asked her while attempting to show no interest at all.
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Oh, it depends.”
“Depends on what?”
Disturbed with the untamed conversation, inadvertently he let the jet of water wet the girl’s chest. Then, he saw with a mix of fear and amusement, the arousing of her nipples.
“Is this what you want? ” she asked with an austere expression in a beautiful and young visage.
In a state of shock and awe, he saw the vigorous Alex coming towards them. Also, with an austere expression and a hammer in his hands. Suddenly, possessed by uncontrollable fear, Lucas left in a hurry the farm. Luckily, he had time to recover his scooter.
And finally, after surviving the weird encounter, he succeeded to arrive in Faro, looking for his father. The Muslim explained had nothing to do with the disappearance of his father. Apparently, Veimar had returned to his homeland, Angola. Lucas saw no way out of the labyrinthic situation. Again, not knowing what to do, he called back his girlfriend with the same scenario. Again, he heard the same voices: «…the Black Plague was conveyed to Europe from the dry plains of Central Asia by the silk road…mêh…mêh…» Intrigued, he also heard back his girlfriend replying for the first time: «…notwithstanding…mêh…mêh…mêh…»
And then he hangs up.
07 Sunday Jul 2019
This is the story of aspiring poet Johann Peter Eckermann, the first literary critic in the world, here told by Martin Puchner, literary critic and philosopher, from Harvard University. Eckermann wrote the first piece of a literary critic, sending it to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the one who coined the word “world literature”.
This short story reveals the essence of work with passion.
30 Thursday May 2019
Posted Aging, Life, Reading good books, Retiring home
inI have an old friend living now in a retiring home that had never read a book before and despised them as unnecessary. In the beginning, realizing that he was alone and somehow disconnected from his family and friends, he entered in a sad, depressed mood, not talking, only mumbling some words when strictly required. One day he discovered the library and he becomes an eager reader, reading practically one book per day. Now he talks a lot more, talking about the characters and stories described in the books authored by good writers, in reality, their true companion. He transformed himself. He is planning to debate books on his institution for crazy and old people. And I really am amazed by the power of reading good books.
06 Monday May 2019
What are “human rights”? This term is usually employed in a weak form, as when we claim the human right to water or clean air. However, the term has legal support.
It is established a set of legal claims to protection and benefits that are anchored in internationally recognized human rights statements, treaties, and instruments. The most important are:
Together they form the “International Bill of Rights”, a set of legal obligations on states and their agents to respect human rights, to protect people in their territories against human rights violations, and to promote human rights.
27 Wednesday Mar 2019
Posted Existential crisis, Life, Uncategorized
in«Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more popular, more productive, more envied, and more admired. Be perfect and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two and a half kids goodbye. Then fly your helicopter to your wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredibly meaningful work that’s likely to save the planet one day.»
– Mark Manson, in “The subtle art of not giving a f*ck”
19 Tuesday Mar 2019
Posted Economy, Education, Networks, Socio-economic development, World economy
in«As the number of connections between people and things adds
up, the consequences of those connections multiply out even faster so that initial successes aren’t self-limiting, but self-feeding.
Mathematics says the sum value of a network increases as the square of the number of members. In other words, as the number of nodes in a network increases arithmetically, the value of the network increases exponentially.
A good definition of a network is organic behavior in a technological matrix.
Every day we see evidence of biological growth in technological systems. This is one of the marks of the network economy: that biology has taken root in technology. And this is one of the reasons why networks change everything.» – Kelly K., in New Rules for the New Economy (1999)
10 Sunday Mar 2019
09 Saturday Mar 2019
When we dive a bit more on the working mechanisms of the State, government, and the Dark Net, a lot of new thoughts pop up in our minds. As it happened to me, so, I tried to make a sense of the stuff around us, I mean, the “Organization” where our short lives happen, take the stage, the “All” for the majority of us, since our lives are a sequence of work and consumption with one holiday at the Caribe for those who are lucky enough, some sex (one activity that tends to disappear or to be replaced by Facebook and sex-robots) and beers with some friends (if you’re popular enough). What we call “The State” is made of just the group of “average” persons, the medians, the workers (even if a good proportion is highly skilled and formed at Sorbonne or Cambridge), those who pay taxes and go to work for the State or the Corporation. This group of people sustains, feeds the “State”, the majority live in cities, uses the tramway, go to the local theatre and the pub-in-the-corner on their own car. Above and untouchable, are the fabulously rich, they live in their own ramparts, they are above the State (they are never arrested, they have the law by their side, and the well-paid lawyers). Below (this is a moral judgment, of course), in another rampart, live the criminals, I mean, not the average bunch of guys that go rob a bank and end arrested after a few weeks, or those amateurs criminals that open an off-shore account because some rich Nigerian guy is dying and wishes to donate his fortune to him/her in the Cayman Islands. I mean the tough and hidden criminals, the organized crime, the Russian Mafia (they control the Dark Net and it seems that they decide the US elections, and what else?) and alike (the “others”, those that are not arrested but die killed by the “others” in the brotherhood). Therefore, as the working mechanism is feed by the “State”, it is unlikely that ever the State will be diminished, like neoliberal theoreticians and proponents pretend to be necessary. By the contrary. So, modern society is just this, and despite the microscopic, unseen, complex mechanisms are hidden to us, observers, its macroscopic working is ridiculously simple and can be represented by the symbol below (Fig.1).
Fig.1-The symbol of our civilized Society in our marvelous civilizations.