Facing the (real) pajama

After a long time without writing a word right here, I’ve just watched a movie that made me think so much about lots of things.

First of all, it talks about ideology: the Nazi one. It is definitely only one more of them, but in fact it is the cruelest and mosFacing thet disgusting one, which makes me doubt how something like this could happened somewhere someday. Indeed, the movie is the well-known “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”.

The pajamas used to be uniforms that refugees and prisoners used to wear in Nazi camps, full of white and blue vertical stripes. I’d advise the red and white ones in the movie, for obvious reason (even if it was only to hide and disguise the blood they used to wear on their own bodies).

“The more one reads/studies, the more one learns”. It makes much sense if we disregard what we read or study. In the movie, we could figure out how children used to keep in touch with ideology, from the radios to the (types of) books, passing through the day-a-day chatting.

The nicest point of this movie is to put a young German boy, who could not understand anything that was happening to the Germany, in direct contact to what his country was really living: horror, atrocities and monstrosity. He was looking for a friend and he suddenly met a Jewish young guy who perfectly understood everything that was happening. He has actually lost his grandmother and grandfather.

Leaving aside the Nazi ideology, the protagonist, Bruno, becomes his friend and tried to help finding the dad’s friend, who’s lost. At the end of the movie (sure I’m not going to reveal the ending), we can feel, more than only see, how hard is to lose someone we do love, changing roles (the Jewish to a German one). Summing up, I do advise to check it out, ‘cause it is a really nice movie to reflect about History and life, in general.

IThauan dos SantosI 

La(s) máscara(s) que NO nos hace(n) falta

Él ya lo sabía, pero seguía intentando… aunque desde muy chico ya lo supiera, luchaba contra su propio destino.

Y así creció. El reloj tampoco paraba, mientras tanto el pequeño – ya no tan pequeño así – estaba aún más seguro de que la profecía se cambiaba en realidad. Sin embargo, había una trampa de las peores, que tenía que ver con una “solución” de corto plazo para su problema: él siempre tenía un plan B.

Un plan B que (siempre) era  más seguro, pero no arreglaba el tema desarrollado (pero no solucionado) en su plan A. De hecho, lo que pasaba era que, por otra parte, él (siempre) seguía con vitorias en sus planes alternativos, aunque aquél, sí, aquél plan A, sencillo, pero igual muy indispensable, quedaba aquí… allí… ¡allá!

… lejos de cambiar su realidad, él creía que no merecía tener esa experiencia. Si todavía no hubo la oportunidad, ¿por qué ahora tendría de haber? Bueno… uno podría decir que sí, que la hubo, pero tampoco ha resultado bien, así que no vale la pena seguir con eso.

A lo mejor el pobre chico se la merecía, tras tanto aguardarla. De todos modos, seguía su camino tortuoso, cambiando de planes, logrando sus objetivos, pero no se olvidaba de aquella herida que llevaba en su pecho. Estaba silenciosa, pero allí, con él, y crecía.

Igual, él creció. Vivió. Si cualquiera le preguntara si él era feliz, él decía que sí. Aunque “con  todo” lo que tenía al alcance de sus manos, nadie sabía el dolor que ese (des)afortunado tenía. No obstante, sabía que la gente le hacía daño sin tener en cuenta todo lo que él ya había vivido, todas sus frustraciones, sus planes... su plan A.  

Ese plan A es una meta laboral, un viaje, una relación seria, un(a)… un sueño cualquier. Ese hombre es Juan, María, Ana, Marta, Paulo… cualquiera. Si tú te lo ves en eso, esté tranquilo…. ¡Ojalá fuera solo tú! Estamos (casi siempre) todos en eso.

IThauan dos SantosI 

Goodbyes

So far I’ve learned from life, “goodbye” doesn’t mean you’re finishing something.

Instead, most of the times, it makes us feel embarrassed and sad, but after that we realize we’re so different in so many ways, as if we’re different people.

Even though it can look like a silly stuff, I am serious. Actually, I could not be surer that life goes by like this.

After watching “Before Sunset”, a really nice movie about traveling, having a nice time abroad and short love stories, I just figured out that (living our) life is much more than growing as a person, professionally speaking. It’s rather developing our personality and capacity of feeling something for others and ourselves (indeed!), while knowing how to deal with so many situations.

I hope I can make myself clear, after a long time without writing here – especially because I have so much to express after such a long time being absent. In fact, the more I live, the more I know that life and love mean much more than long run projects. Far from that, they are made of lots of short run experiences, projects, gains, losses, victories and failures. If I am wrong, please I beg somebody to convince me to the contrary – especially because I’ve been seeing it working quite well like that everywhere (in general). The past teaches us that we gotta go further, looking forward, but never alone – I mean, with somebody by our sides as supporter, friend, lover. Despite, I’ve seen changeable icons, as if we were quickly disposable and easily replaceable.

No matter how mad I go when I realize it, I see some sense in this way of living, which is actually an ideology for me. “Learning-by-doing” and “trial and error” made me understand that it’s how it’d work better (unless I’ve been completely wrong about the signs that life has shown me, but I don’t think so). Now I know HOW and WHY I messed up so badly.

Getting back to the movie, the main character says once that "(...) my life is just memories or something [like that]." I almost had a heart attack when I heard such thing, mainly because I had the answer to the questions that I was looking for… and for too long, in reality. And so it is… life is made of memories; smiles and laughs; crying and sadness; beautiful sunny days followed by ugly rainy ones.

I cannot lie to myself that I still believe (and I wish I am not the only one) in some love stories told by storytellers and so on. I still do, indeed! Notwithstanding, now I’m sure I’m better prepared to play the game, not as a freshman anymore. Now I know that “goodbye” doesn’t mean the end of something (taking into account a short run perspective), but it’s rather a way to keep going and growing… and that’s the reason why I mentioned the “trial and error” and “learning-by-doing” theories as they’re (in fact) kinds of tips that life gives us, trying to help us be better players – although we don’t get it easily.

IThauan dos SantosI 

Epistemologia, metafísica e... emoção

"Mente vazia oficina do diabo". É o tipo de ditado que se ouve e se acredita, sem se pensar duas vezes, afinal já se tornou sabedoria cristalizada e socialmente aceita. Daquele gênero de frases de efeito que se replica sem se compreender; alguém já testou e aprovou. Foi/é suficiente.

Voltamos, neste ponto, ao eterno conflito entre a ciência e o empirismo. É bem mais seguro e prudente uma prova real para constatar e defender uma teoria, mas, para mim, basta (eu) ser resultado de uma experiência para que qualquer tese seja defendida. E com louvor... É nessa linha epistemológica que sigo, sem grandes maquinarias laboratoriais nem avançadas tecnologias de ponta.

Talvez, eu deva ser crucificado pela ciência, porém razão e emoção nada mais são que paradoxos da vida: cada qual demanda seu próprio tratamento. Um estatístico e computacional... O outro psicológico e psiquiátrico. Pergunto-me se nessa mesma ordem, mas acho que a resposta, já a tenho. E não é a que se espera.

Por que não, logo, modelar nossos sentimentos? Muitos já tentaram – e ainda tentam – desenvolver equações com n-incógnitas, visando descrever o que ninguém explica. Nessa hora eu me pergunto onde se encontram os modelos econométricos, as inferências bayesianas, os algoritmos genéticos, a programação não-linear avançada, mesmo as heurísticas mais triviais... Quem sabe não seja uma elucubração (ou mesmo um súbito devaneio) seguir por essa trajetória, mas qual é a finalidade da ciência afinal?

Demócrito defende que “a função da ciência é descrever a natureza da forma como ela é, e não da maneira que gostaríamos que ela fosse”, portanto não se põe dúvida sobre o teor objetivo do que se é científico. Entretanto, já questionava Galileu: “mas por que ponho eu em dúvida algo de que tenho necessariamente prova sensível?”. E o que é a sensibilidade que não a tradução do que se tem por subjetivo? Como em uma árvore de decisão, volta-se à situação de partida ou à casa inicial, como queira... afinal, toda essa discussão não passa de um grande jogo, cujo tabuleiro é dinâmico e as peças complexas.

ILuan dos SantosI