Los títulos universitarios dan ingresos privilegiados cuando permiten excluir. Pierden esa "ventajea competitiva" cuando se multiplican los graduados. Para mantenerla, hay la tendencia a no quedarse en la licenciatura: sacar una maestría; y no quedarse en la maestría: sacar un doctorado; y no quedarse en el doctorado: hacer estudios posfoctorales. La esprial sin fin se genera por una contradicción insuperable. No se puede privilegiar a todos sin hacer que el privilegio deje de ser un privilegio. [...]Si el 100% de la población tuviera educación superior, todos tendrían esa ventaja: nadie la tendría.

Back in the 90’s (don’t I sound old) they seemed like something else, something mysterious, free, rebellious, even gallant. I thought of them as something beyond my young understanding, something that was deep, and hard to understand, and it was the peak of all human transcending. They were no longer children, and yet they were not adults; they were a mystic creature in between.

I remember I looked up to them in respect, but in an accomplice kind of respect, a sympathetic bow if you will. Why? Well, they were talked about amongst adults, they were described all as animalistic, uncontrollable, even criminal who were reckless, every single one of them. They were to be feared, they were to be stopped, and they were an idol. And the thought of such a creature that would even scare the adults, who at the time seemed to me like an unquestionable authority, was enough to consider them myths, to see them as roaming wanderers behind a curtain on mystery, drugs, sex, and rock and roll.

Whenever I looked at them, I recall thinking what it would be like, to be them, to have this separate universe where anything could happen, where one was allow anything, where one was to be daring and in the top of the world. They didn’t seem insecure, they were just fed up of stability; they weren’t stupid, they were audacious. And I believe this is because I thought of them as people, not like us children. We were no one, we were dressed as our mothers would command because we were just children, we would be thought as funny when saying something stupid, because after all we were just that, children. We were not expected or permitted to act like people. But them, well, with them it was a complete different story, they no longer played by the rules, or had to, they made their rules, their world, which they own every bit of it. They were people, without having to be boring adults.

And this myth I had about the youth did not stop at their unspoken war against rules and adults. I thought of them as strong, beautiful, sassy and intelligent humans, who had most likely never been children. They each were special in their own way, all of them defied the very laws of nature, they could conquer the world but were just dulled by it, they could take over the minds of everyone but were just uninterested. And having this idea in mind, any adolescent who I found with no charm, no luck and no wit was just an overgrown child, nothing special about him. In this way, there could be none that wasn’t amazing; the ones who weren’t just… were not part of the group.

And I’m not very sure why I had this thoughts about this tribes, or why would I give that much importance to that group. It could possibly be just the beginnings of my love for rebellion and decadence; it could be that I never felt in my age range. Or it could be that they were simply super humans, who were kind enough to walk among us.

But with the years, and the 00’s (if that’s what we’re calling them) I realized the latter was maybe an idea I should revise.

When I hit the age of 13 I knew it would happen, I knew that puberty would arrive and make it all gross and large, and awkward. But I also knew the doors to that secret legacy of special beings would begin to open. Needless to say, I had to wait a while… And the fact is that my expectancy of belonging to that admired universal army of rouges did not change. This meant that I was still expecting, still waiting to be one of them, to see my peers get there, and all together we would travel the Atlantic on canoes, we would fly to the end of the world with nothing but kites made of hopes and dreams. We would take over the world.

But for some reason the stupid kids were now the stupid puberts, the once fart and buggers jokes were now the sex and –other fluids- ones. The world at 13 or 14 hadn’t really changed as I thought it would. I was waiting for everyone to have some melodramatic situation every week so I could come up with some witty and sympathetic solution that would for some reason work better for me than it did on the TV. And all I had was Jimmy Nobody and Joe Underacomplisher, whose parents fought over Christmas dinner. This wasn’t the world I had been seeing all those years. But all and all, maybe it was the people who surrounded me, so I waited.

And as time went by, and I observed people, they, I mean we, were not audacious, we were stupid kids who borrowed someone mother’s car under the influence and drove like crazy people. We were not fed up with stability; we secretly craved for it, look under the rocks to find it in whatever presentation it came. And most certainly we were not people; we were far from being such entities, we were lost and large children playing the game of being old, of having power and we played to have fun.

I will admit there were some which shared characteristic of the rebellious ways I praised as child, there were those who dared enough to play the actual role. But that was all it was, a role. They drank like pirates, they danced like go go girls, they drove like Meteor, they had sex like groupies, but when the lights went off, and their mask no longer could be seen, they were just that, roles. And sometimes, just sometimes, there was a real people under that art craft of a face. I happened to be lucky enough to find a few.

Then, for some time I thought that was it, that this masked phonies and their fancy lives with their fancy stories were it, the image I had long formed and revered was diminished to these people who I could see trough, that all the waiting and all the expecting had been for that, to find out my vision as a child was an illusion. And in a way it was true, there is no such thing as that much of a large group of people who are all awesome, who are all in a blood pact of changing and revolutionizing the world.

Because for what now I have learned, it is not about the age, or the stupid coiffures, or the slutty clothes. The core of this war against establishment did not belong to the teenagers, it never did; it just seemed like it. It belongs to those who refuse to wear a mask, it belongs who those who dare to speak against the majority for a cause, it belongs to the ragged-trousered guy playing the guitar in the rain, just for the love of music, it belongs to the girl in the yellow dress who insists on riding the bicycle to work even if it’s some kilometers away, it belongs to the bloggers without readers who keep writing for the love of it, it belongs to just a few of us. Maybe not people, maybe not all teenagers, but we exist; as stupid and insecure as the next guy, but here.

by I'm the penguin

Among many varied collective fantasies, one which stands out the most is escaping death, continue living forever, be infinite. And while the possibilities of this have been shown to be inexistent, and that it would be something hard to explain technically, people keep imagining this, it continues to show in any expression of society’s dreams and desires. It is a common argument for a story, or the causing plot for many myths, like drinking from the Holy Grail, or the fountain of youth, or Highlander. There is a big fascination of man about dead, but even a bigger impact in the thought of escaping it.

There are many sayings in all sorts of formats that they all speak about how we will all end up dead, and this is the only official universal truth for all the human species: we all die, everything dies. It is a debatable reasoning, but the only thing in common with every person on Earth is that one day or another we will no longer be among the living. Another thing is that as we know, dead is a part of life’s cycle, there must be a closure for there to be a new beginning, it is basic understanding of cycles. So why would we want this immortality thing? Why would we want to lose the only thing that bounds us to humanity? Why disrupt the equilibrium?

I think some of the reason is really between those questions. Because when we always see the (very cliqued by now) villain who goes to great extents to become immortal, we can see traces of lack of humanity in them. It is more as if they want to renounce humanity and become something else, something that does not share a common future, and something that will not end up in the same place. That something is at the same time horrifying and brilliant, a being that escaped termination, that will forever be.

That is also most of the magic behind most magic creatures that live forever, an example: vampires. Beyond the blood-sucking and author-given-super-powers the vampire literature is so popular and mystic because of their immortality, and not just because they live for a long time and have stories to tell, but because of their detachment to the world, their lack of humanity that is made by the disconnection from the common goal, the universal finish line.

The sole concept of living forever, experiencing thousands of years more, rounding the Earth without fear, it all sounds very daring, unnatural, fantastic. But how much would life be worth then? Because if we cannot die, then there would be no reason to fear, to be safe, to care about anything. Our concept of life is defined to protect it and do anything possible so it is long enough to become happy at some point(, or at least that’s what we like to say). But what good is it if we don’t have to take care of it? Do we only concentrate on being happy? For how long? It sure should long for quite some time. Because with this reasoning we go back to vampires, who because of their immortality and need to kill to “survive” become monsters, dark creatures who live from getting life from others, feed their empty existences with the end of a life.

And sure, fear to dead is a great reason to consider, we do not know what is then. Some believe in heaven, some in reincarnation, others in many varied sorts of believes, but there is also the very disturbing, very empty option that there is simply no then. That you just cease to exist and that is it, no more of your person ever, of your essence, all left of you are memories, which you don’t even know to be accurate or good.

That indeed is a great fear any reasoning human has felt, or should felt. Because this same feeling is what makes us want to leave legacy, so transcend, to leave a mark in the world that we ever existed. Throughout history we can see a great number of people who have done extraordinary things to transcend, to be remembered. And I don’t really believe this people would be so remembered, or have done so great things if they hadn’t had an “ultimatum”, a dead line to do something of great magnificence that starts from your first breath until your last.

So, while the mere thought of being invulnerable creatures, beyond humanity, beyond any limit ever known, is very appealing and amusing, we should also consider the meaning of what immortality would mean. We would not only loose the connection with humanity in the we all die sense, but also in the actual living life sort of way. And what I really mean by this is that there is no real life without dead, and it is never a meaningful dead unless it is a meaningful life that has ended.

[while i don't condone the time traveling as well, and have my reasons to do it, I at least try to keep a "literaire" posting, I hope you remember what that is my dearest kite]
by I'm the penguin

La generación de gente nacida entre los años finales de los 80s y los 90s es pronto catalogada como una generación apática, nihilista y materialista. Pero decir que nuestra generación de jóvenes está solamente basada en los excesos mediáticos, el consumismo derrochador y la globalización carente de identidad, sería muy simple, y un error. Esta, como todas las generaciones, no es más que el producto de su entorno, su historia y lo que sucede en su desarrollo.

 No importa la dirección que tome una generación en conjunto, siempre está presente la marca de la historia de sus padres, la herencia histórica y cultural que nos acompaña. Y para entender a esta generación, común mente llamada la generación de la Red, es necesario conocer las generaciones que la afectan.

Retomando desde donde Paz menciona en El Laberitno de a Soledad la “Inteligenica Mexicana”, el dice cómo es que en su actualidad, los años 50s, México ya era un lugar sin más cultura que la mundial. A esto se refería que en vez de crecer de la raíz de dos culturas, las negaba, se alejaba de sus raíces precolombinas, y negaba su tradición española. Dejando a México con nada más que la historia mundial, y su papel en ella. Y esto nos habla de un inicio de globalización, a partir de los años 50s, la generación donde crecieron los abuelos de la generación de la Red.

Esta época se caracteriza como una de las más estables económicamente en el siglo XX para México, con influencia del estilo de vida Norteamericana, y la preponderancia del sistema capitalista. Es cuando la globalización comienza a extenderse, acentuándose aún más la perdida de una identidad nacional. Sumado a esto, existía una cultura donde imperaba  la censura, la opresión y las buenas costumbres.

Este ambiente fue lo que ocasionó que los hijos de esta generación, que crecieron en los 70s se rebelaran contra el régimen establecido. Continuando con las ideas de cambio social de los 60s, los jóvenes esparcían ideas de libertad en todo el mundo. Es cuando las mujeres en Latinoamérica comienzan a buscar una carrera profesional en su mayoría, y equidad de género y libertad sexual. Pero con esto también vino un periodo de tensión política global en Latinoamérica, causado por las dictaduras establecidas.

Por esta situación delicada, y el encuentro de ideas de las diferentes generaciones también causó una oleada de populismo en los países latinoamericanos. En los 70s también fue cuando después de una etapa estable de la economía mexicana, empezó a haber crisis e inflaciones muy acentuadas.

Estas situaciones dejan a México en un escenario que ya no es a cerca de las naciones, si no de la historia conjugada, de una economía que depende de otros países y de una cultura sin pies ni cabeza, solo influencia externa, un país globalizado. Además estas generaciones se acostumbran a un gobierno corrupto y sin cambios, una economía que es inestable y en constante crisis.

Esto se concentra y se traduce en una ideología que contempla la participación en la política como algo inútil, se es indiferente a ella. También un constante estado de desconfianza a cerca de la economía. Y más importante en la temática de El Laberinto de la Soledad, una ideología sin identidad nacional.

Y los hijos de esta generación, quienes heredan los estigmas del país y las historias de crisis, son los 90s, la juventud de la apatía. Y esta generación no solo tiene esto, sino que también crece en un ámbito de revolución tecnológica y mediática. Habiendo televisiones en casi todas las casas, y el desarrollo del internet, la información se volvió por primera vez para una generación joven, algo accesible y de muy alta velocidad.

Esta generación crece con una pre-concepción del gobierno como algo corrupto e inmutable, con el Tratado de libre comercio de Norteamérica, inundando el mercado de productos de Estados Unidos, su lenguaje y su cultura. El mexicano de esta generación no se vive como tal, se desentiende de sus llamadas raíces y se une a la ideología mundial, convirtiéndose en ciudadano del mundo. El joven ya no se vive macho ni charro, ahora es un fresa, un naco o un geek. Su distancia con los otros países se ha acortado y considera el extranjero como una realidad cercana. Pero a pesar de estos cambios drásticos, el mexicano joven aún es cerrado, se priva en sus mascaras y ve a la vida con indiferencia. El mexicano se ha liberado de México, pero sigue atrapado en el gran laberinto, solo.

[versión mexicana... dios bendiga al derecho de un autor por traducir descaradamente]
por I'm the penguin

If liberty is so cherished, then how come we tend to dismiss it so flauntily? Humanity in general has fought for a world where we can all choose, a world where we can be whatever we want, and we have progressed in a way. But despite that, we end up seeking a society where the moral is based on the duty and universal laws, instead of responsible choices and moral relativity. People often think the way to achieve happiness is by moral absolutist practices, when they in fact only limit our freedom and chances to be happy.

Moral absolutism is the set of rules for a society to behave in a way, considering universal laws of how to act, without questioning. At first sight, we might think that it is a nice way to manage society and that we should all behave in such a way that would be considered universally right, so there is peace and harmony. But the problem with it is that we stop thinking, we no longer put any critical thought into our actions and no longer choose.

In philosophy and life we see that human’s most important characteristic and ability is the one of choosing. Having the possibility of deciding is what makes us apart from all the other species. So if taking different options and deciding between them with critical analysis, is what makes us human, why would we want to take that out? And perhaps putting a set of established rules can be easier; so that everyone knows how to act properly, but then, where do we leave freedom.

Certainly said freedom is what allows people to commit crimes, and if those people had an absolute moral code, perhaps they would not even attempt such actions. But is also freedom what takes revolutionaries to face their tyrant governments, even if that is against the established code of behavior, even if it is against law. We need liberty in order to exist as humans, but what we should do, is having this freedom, yet use it responsibly.

Absolutist moral codes in religions, governments and all the systems where they exist must end. We need to develop into a thoughtful and critical society which can make decisions of their own, and if there are disagreements between each other, work them out civilly. Surly religion is useful for everyone, we need something to believe in, but we should take their moral system as guides, not unquestionable laws.

[in case you didn't get the point the last hundred posts]

By I'm the penguin