Archives for category: Respect Mutual.

Pentru cei ce locuiesc pe Luna voi face un scurt rezumat.
800 de fosti si actuali elevi ai liceului au facut un grup pe Facebook, loc in care si-au varsat naduful acumulat in timpul vietii de licean. Unii dintre profesori s-au simtit jigniti de modul ‘frust’ in care au fost exprimate aceste ‘frustrari’. Ca urmare o parte dintre elevi au ‘suferit consecinte’. ‘Asistenta’ este profund dezbinata.

Unul dintre cele mai pertinente comentarii asupra subiectului, cu toate ca destul de pasional si pe alocuri partinitor, mi se pare cel facut de presedintele Consiliului National al Elevilor, Horia Onita. Iata un scurt fragment:

“Educaţia centrată pe elev, educaţia fundamentata pe principii de răspundere publică şi de reprezentativitate, aşa cum stipulează şi art. 3 din Legea Educaţiei Naţionale 1/2011 vor rămâne doar utopii până în momentul în care se va înţelege că profesorul şi elevul din România sunt parteneri ai aceluiaşi sistem, şi nu subordonaţi unul altuia.”

Acesta este un bun punct de pornire pentru a intelege ce se intampla.

Pentru ca tabloul sa devina cu adevarat inteligibil trebuie sa ‘marim cadrul’ pana cand reusim sa cuprindem si pe cel de al treilea mare actor al acestei drame. Si anume “publicul”, format in cea mai mare parte din “rude/parinti”.

Rude si parinti nu doar ale elevilor ci si ale profesorilor!

Sa vedem ce cred unii despre ceilalti.

Parerea unora dintre elevi fata de o parte dintre profesori rezulta din pozele si comentariile deja publicate in presa.

Parerea majoritara a profesorilor despre respectivii elevi rezulta din ‘sentintele’ primite de acestia.

Parerea parintilor elevilor despre profesori rezulta foarte clar din lefurile primite de profesori. Destul de indirect, intr-adevar, dar pana la urma noi, cetatenii, prin vot, suntem cei care am tot hotarat destinul acestei tari. Adica noi suntem cei care am adus la putere generatii dupa generatii de politicieni care nu au reusit sa reorganizeze invatamantul.
Tot noi, parintii, suntem cei care discutam ‘fara perdea’ despre subiectul asta. Atat in familie, in fata copiiilor, cat si in media.
“Invatamantul romanesc produce tampiti”.
“Profesorii sunt corupti”.
In conditiile astea chiar ne asteptam ca odata ajunsi elevi copiii or sa nutreasca vre-un mare respect pentru ‘cadrele didactice’?

Parerea parintilor despre proprii lor copii rezulta din toate cele de mai sus.
Daca ne-ar fi pasat cu adevarat de ei faceam in asa fel incat sa le lasam mostenire o tara in stare de functionare si nu o vaca atat slaba din cauza mulsului excesiv la care a fost supusa incat abia mai sta in picioare.
Daca ne pasa cu adevarat faceam in asa fel incat sa avem timp si pentru ei. Degeaba le luam telefoane performante cu care sa faca poze in timpul orelor si calculatoare cu care sa ‘aranjeze’ acele poze si sa le puna pe Internet daca atunci cand ajungem acasa suntem atat de sleiti de puteri incat nu ne mai pasa de nimic.

Copiii nostri au nevoie de sufletul nostru mai mult decat de banii nostri.
Copiii nostri au nevoie de educatie, nu doar de informatie bruta. Iar educatia nu poate veni nici de la parinti spetiti de munca si nici de la profesori flamanzi, rupti in spate sau preocupati mai mult de meditatii decat de orele de la scoala.

Ce parere au copii nostri despre noi?
O sa vedem peste vreo douazeci de ani cand ne va veni vremea sa iesim la pensie.
Si nu va ganditi ca veti fi strans destui bani pana atunci incat nu veti mai avea nevoie de ajutorul lor.
Degeaba toti banii din conturi daca copii nostri se vor fi dus sa-i ‘stearga la cur’ pe batranii din vestul Europei sau de aiurea.

Banii nu valoreaza nimic daca nu sunt pusi in miscare de niste oameni suficient de calificati din punct de vedere profesional incat sa poata tine o economie in carca si suficient de educati incat sa isi dea seama ca o tara corupta nu poate supravietui prea multa vreme.

http://adevarul.ro/locale/oradea/scandalul-pozelor-porno-liceul-elita-cluj-reactia-dura-consiliului-elevilor-singurii-trebuie-anchetati-caz-tocmai-profesori-1_54f2ff6f448e03c0fd1af44f/index.html#
http://adevarul.ro/locale/cluj-napoca/replica-elevului-cluj-dat-afara-postari-porno-facebook-despre-profesori-liceul-Sincai-auschwitz-Scolar-contineau-mesajele-liceenilor-1_54f0740f448e03c0fd0b002b/index.html
http://www.ziare.com/scoala/bacalaureat/scoala-noastra-chiar-scoate-tampiti-1105168
http://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-opinii-16399007-profesorii-corupti-sunt-stapanii-sau-capusele-educatiei.htm

Do you have any qualms about ‘what’s going to happen when these children grow up’?

Have you considered the fact that it was us who raised them?

That we, their parents, presented them with clothes like these when they were young and that it was a member of our own generation who had fashioned this design and then organized manufacturing and distribution?

That we, their parents, are those who share jokes like the one I just found in my mail?

“Today be my baby girl’s 18th birthday. I be so glad that this be my last child support payment! Month after month, year after year, all those payments!
So I call my baby girl, LaKeesha, to come to my house, and when she get there, I say, “Baby girl, I want you to take this check over to yo momma house and tell her this be the last check she ever be gettin’ from me, and I want you to come back and tell me the ‘spression on yo mama’s face.”
So, my baby girl take the check over to her momma. I be anxious to hear what she say, and bout the ‘spression on her face.
Baby girl walk through the door, I say, “Now what yo momma say ’bout that?”
She say to tell you that “you ain’t my daddy” …and watch the ‘spression on yo face.”

This post is dedicated to my friends who do not yet accept that rituals still play a huge role in our lives.
No matter if we are religious or not, in the conventional sense of the word, we all feel something special when witnessing rituals being observed.

To me this is a powerful proof that we need to belong, that our need to be an accepted member of a community is ingrained somewhere deep inside us. And for good reason because none of us would be able to survive on its own for more than a very short time.
In fact this is the real meaning of ‘religion’.
“Religion (derived from the Latin religare, meaning ‘to bind’) binds people together.”

From time to time religious teachings become perverted, in most instances by precisely those who were supposed/’entrusted with the divine mission’ to preserve and pass them on to future generations. We shouldn’t allow these manipulators to destroy our livelihood.

Maybe time has come for us to understand the entire process and to rebuild religiosity/togetherness on mutual respect?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/HW3QVLlK-kE?feature=player_embedded
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0W7YdKYPl0
https://www.wordnik.com/words/religare

Some of us go by ‘the winner takes it all’.
For them each ‘win’ is another step that must be climbed on the ladder towards ‘success’.

Until the inevitable failure, and a single one is enough for the kind of game this people choose to play, brings them back at the foot of the ladder.

Samuel Becket suggested and then Nicholas Nassim Taleb amply demonstrated that there is an alternative to this scenario.

Next time ‘fail better’ was how Beckett taught us to deal with life’s inevitable downs while Taleb’s notion of ‘antifragility’ is the key that unlocks the door towards the understanding that the real success is to be able to survive everything that life throws at you.

In fact that’s what we’ve done, as a species, until now. We are still here, right? Even more, we managed to overcome all hurdles and became the dominant species on  Earth.

There is one small thing though. We’ve apparently grown close to the limits of our planet. We’ve explored almost all of the land mass and we’ve discovered many of it’s natural resources. And now we have become aware of all this.

We have some obvious venues in front of us.
Start fighting among ourselves for the control of what ever resources still are out there. Depending on what kind of weapons we’ll use this scenario might lead to total destruction or to a long war of attrition that will be won by those who have the less to loose. Any of these two will lead to a lot of misery.
Or extend competitive cooperation – the kind that is currently known as ‘really free market’, no monopolies/bullying allowed – to cover up the entire planet. The demographic pressure will ease up considerably – what we currently describe as ‘advanced nations’ have a lot less children than the rest of the population – so we’ll be able to stretch out existing resources for longer. This way we’ll have a lot more time at our disposal to develop sustainable technologies that will enable us to survive on the really long run, potentially until the Sun will grow nasty on us.
And who knows what will happen until then.

But to find out what the future has in store for us we’ll have to survive til that moment. And in order to do that we’ll have to re-learn what it means to trust, respect and love our fellow human beings. All of them.

http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/4362/

https://www.facebook.com/PrinceEaHipHop/photos/a.10150198151749769.315787.71760664768/10153123610239769/?type=1&theater

broadcast to the Universe

“Professor Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge cosmologist, warned in 2010 that humans should keep as silent as possible because alien civilisations may be attracted to Earth and have the technology to travel here and exploit its resources. “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” he said.”

Let’s accept for the sake of the argument that an ‘imperialistic and inconsiderate’ civilization (like the western Europeans were during the time of Columbus) manages to reach the technological prowess of being able to travel at velocities higher than the speed of light – otherwise no one would bother to leave their native planet except for a real emergency since building an empire in this circumstances is impractical.
Would you think they would wait for an invitation from us? Or that they would even need one to know that the Earth is a ‘hospitable’ planet?
If ‘they’ are as belligerent as we were, and still are, the Universe would be either divided into at least two empires busily trying to bite each other’s throat or a huge one who continuously gobbles up new and new planets.
We are still free after so many eons since the galaxy has been in place so chances are that either ‘they’ are a lot more peaceful or interstellar travel is not a feasible thing. Not in any recognizable – by us – form of animal life, anyway.

What we are left with is another, and for me a lot more plausible, hypothesis.
Long range travel has indeed been mastered, in one form or another. After a prolonged interstellar war or even from the very beginning the ‘travelers’ have understood that peace is a lot more ‘profitable’/nice/cozy than generalized war so they don’t allow ‘beligerant’ civilizations to get out of their planets until the would be new-comers ‘grow up’ from their ‘waring’ pubescence.
For instance by installing monitoring stations around ‘promising’ planets and actually sabotaging their efforts at ‘conquering the space’ until they reach a comprehensively peaceful stage of social development.

I remember that one of the conditions for Romania to be accepted in both European Union and NATO was for it to have good relations/’friendship treaties’ with all its neighbors. If we were wise enough to do such thing don’t you think that a civilization that has mastered space travel should have reached the same conclusion way back in their development?

It seems that our fright about the ‘aliens’ tells more about the way we are than about anything else…

 
Scientific thinking gave us vaccines, planes, computers, plenty of food through higher yield crops and state of the art health care, among other things.
Most of us have decided that using computers is good, including for our children, despite the fact that many of them develop “Facebook addiction”, that planes are safe enough to transport us and our children from place to place and that antibiotics tainted beef isn’t that bad tasting after-all.
Simultaneously some of us decided, all of a sudden and after more than 200 years of successful and safe use of the method that vaccination is ‘bad for you’. No, almost none of those have yet given up the use of planes and still surf furiously on the internet in their quest to convince others of their new found truth. Some of them have indeed shifted to organic food, whenever they can afford it.
Meanwhile the Taliban have started to shoot down the health workers that work hard to immunize Pakistani kids against polio.

And all this came to be because some reckless people who should have known better started to misuse the principles of the same scientific thinking by:
– Trying to produce perfect assassins through the use of LSD,
– Building an eavesdropping net the size of the entire Planet,
– Producing so many almost poisonous food additives and by promoting almost useless but very expensive drugs that regular people have lost their faith in both big pharma and ‘regular’ food industry,
– By the CIA using a “a sham hepatitis B vaccination project to collect DNA in the neighborhood where” bin Laden was hiding in a failed attempt to find him.  (As we all know the good news are that they found him after-all, using more straightforward methods.)
The bad news are that if we don’t clear up our act people will slowly but totally loose their trust in what we now call ‘scientific attitude towards the world’.
And, in fact, the real question is not about where are science and technology headed to but what do WE use them for!

Din pacate prea multi dintre pacatosi se decid sa spuna adevarul abia atunci cand este prea tarziu.
Atat pentru ei, adica dupa ce au pacatuit, cat si pentru ceilalalti, care nu mai cred nimic din ce spun acestia tocmai din cauza prea multelor pacate comise de ei.

Tot din pacate si tot de prea multe ori nici macar ajunsi in momente de criza prea multi dintre pacatosi nu au curajul sa dezvaluie intregul adevar. Mai degraba transforma oportunitatea unei confesiuni potential eliberatoare, macar din punct de vedere psihologic/moral, intr-o sordida lupta de ariergarda.
Dar asta nu inseamna ca printre spusele lor nu se gasesc adevarate perle. Ar fi pacat sa nu le ridicam din mizeria de pe jos, mai ales ca ne sunt extrem de folositoare chiar noua.

Ca sa nu prelungesc prea mult introducerea iata ce spunea Elena Udrea atunci cand procuratura a cerut pentru ea, intr-o sigura sedinta a Parlamentului, trei incuviintari pentru anchetare si tot trei incuviintari pentru arestare.(Exista oare rubrica pentru chestii din astea in World Book of Guinness Records? Poate la ‘ciudatenii’?!?)

“Timp de 10 ani am luptat pentru statul de drept, justiţie independentă, instituţii puternice. Sunt dintre cei care au acuzat Parlamentul că nu poate garanta progresul României şi nu poate da ţării viitorul de care are nevoie, despre ineficienţa Legsilativului, despre reducerea parlamentarilor la 300, de nevoia întăririi justiţiei şi reformele pozitive la nivelul serviciilor de securitate. Am încercat în discursul meu să mut greutatea acţiunii de pe Parlament pe alte instituţii. Într-o anumită măsură recunosc că am greşit. Am pierdut legitimitatea publică a Parlamentului pentru a creşte prestigiul altora din păcate. Cosnstat astăzi eu însămi ce înseamnă să faci parte dintr-o clasă politică şi un Parlament cu credibilitatea pierdută pe fondul clădirii unor statui unor instituţii de forţă.”

Pentru ‘conspirationisti’ acest pasaj ar putea constitui un argument de genul ‘uite dom-le cum vor astia sa slabeasca Romania’. Pentru cei care au ‘boala’ pe ‘servicii’ inca un motiv sa sustina ‘astia au deja prea multa putere’!
N-am de unde sa stiu nici ce a vrut cu adevarat sa spuna Elena Udrea si nici daca serviciile au prea multa putere sau nu. Cu atat mai putin am vre-un argument clar cum ca ar exista vreo conspiratie malefica care ar incearca sa distruga, din exterior, statul roman.
Ca or fi tot felul de oportunisti si de pescuitori in ape tulburi care isi incearca permanent norocul… asta e cu totul si cu totul altceva.

Si, de fapt, exact asta a marturisit, printre dinti, Elena Udrea. Ca a facut parte dintr-un grup de indivizi care odata ajunsi la putere au incercat sa foloseasca aceasta putere in scop personal. Ba, mai mult, ca nu s-au multumit cu firmituri ci ca au incercat, din pozitiile pe care le ocupau si in mod total ‘netransparent’, sa schimbe structurile de putere din interiorul statului roman, tocmai pentru ca sa isi poata atinge mai usor scopurile. Indiferent care or fi fost acelea.

Ar fi mare pacat sa trecem prea usor peste marturisirea, chiar din partea unui ‘initiat’, ca exista astfel de tentative.

http://m.adevarul.ro/news/politica/arestare-elena-udrea-dosarul-microsoft-gala-bute-urmarire-penala–noaptea-mai-lunga-1_54d90b6b448e03c0fd71923a/index.html

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit another salt mine, an active one this time,

My mother worked in the mining industry, my father in law was a miner almost all his life, my first job was in a factory building mining equipment, I went down another half a dozen mines before, both active and transformed into touristic attractions. I thought I had a fair imagine about what it means to be a miner.

In the mine I visited yesterday there was a small church, entirely carved in salt of course. On one of its walls the visitors can read:

“Afara-s doar chinuri si nevoi,
Aici, in mina-i Dumnezeu cu noi.”

(Out there, topside, nothing but trouble comes in sight.
Down here, deep into the mine, we have the Lord on our side.)

How deep into our souls do we need to dig in order to find our good nature?

And then I found this picture on Facebook:

I started to comment on “The reason the economy crashed and has been slow to rebound is because of government intervention, not the market mechanism” by Nick Sorrentino and got carried away. So I transformed the comment into a post of my own.

I fully agree with your conclusion “I prefer an open sourced economy to one which is manipulated by programmers writing in a language which is full of bugs and which brings the system down periodically.” but I find your initial assumption to be too vague.
The current situation was indeed heavily influenced by government decisions. And yes, they were completely out of touch with reality – central planning never works.
But here is where our ways depart.
The solution for the current situation is not at all ‘less’ government. Or, god forbid, ‘no government’!.
Free market is the most efficient way of running an economy only it has two limitations. It is populated by people and the total amount of trade-able goods is limited. Hence the market is never really free. We do need a free market only the natural evolution of any limited system is to gradually loose it’s freedom. So it is us who have to guard the freedom of the market.
And this is what ‘government’ business should really be. Not to tell us what to do – to plan for all of us – but to make sure that nobody becomes so powerful as to be able to dictate to others what to do.

Some of you might wonder “Why should we not accept any monopoly if it has been ‘lifted to power by the free market'”?
I mentioned earlier that there is no such thing as a really free market.
OK, you might disagree with that, after all we both advocate freedom and I’ll use a reason we both agree upon: “central planning doesn’t work“. Ever! So why do you think that a private monopoly would be able to function any better than a public one? Just because it’s private? I assure you that Lenin saw the entire Russia as his back yard and that didn’t stop him from messing that country so big that it’s still reeling under the consequences. King George saw the American colonies as his private possessions and that didn’t make the early Americans any happier.
So what we have to implement is a completely different kind of government, not a weaker one. Blaming ‘the (notion of) government’ instead of specific government decisions only induces the impression that ‘government’ as a whole is useless/despicable and that drives people away from (the concept of) government.

What we really need, that different kind of government I was speaking about, is a government that is closely watched by the people and who jealously defends both the political and economic freedom of the individuals, not either notion of ‘central planning’ or ‘vested interests’ – which, in the end, are uncannily similar.

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2015/01/the-reason-the-economy-crashed-and-has-been-slow-to-rebound-is-because-of-government-intervention-not-the-market-mechanism/

Most people tend to be passionate about what they do, parents in particular.
This is absolutely normal, what could be more important than ‘the future of mankind’?

And the more passionate we are about something, the more we want to reach the best results in what we do, right?

Only sometimes we are so busy trying to demonstrate that our best is the best there is that we neglect some of the basic aspects of the day to day reality.
The most neglected one being that very seldom ‘one size fits all’.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-routly/where-similac-and-the-mother-hood-go-wrong-and-why-it-matters_b_6536280.html