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January / May 2010

THIS MONTH' s THEME:

The next ten revolutions

No one makes a revolution by himself; and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.

Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin


A new revolution, every now and then..

So, this is the real new beginning of this glorious blog!
I have announced it several times before, I know, but it took just a couple of months more.

Please remember I am alone on this, no one stands for me when I am too busy with other things, and no one pays me for this, apart from donations, that are always welcome.
I do keep on, don't worry, in an irregular way, but I do.

This month, which is five in reality, and being it the start of a very much welcomed new decade, I will write about what I think the ten next 'revolutions' will be in our World. In the next ten years, but it will more probably extend into longer periods of time, as not all what announced by the signs of our times will actually realize soon.

The word 'revolution' is often abused, marketers love it, as it sounds exciting, collective and smart. Practically everything is a revolution, according to them. But you know that I always look deeper into our world-society and don't let myself be distracted by the marketing fanfares.
I will try to spot what some call 'trends', the most important movements and flows in the world community that are going on right now, or are expected to blossom in the next years.

Of course, you know me, I am not going to write about violent revolutions, no no, as negative examples might be, only peaceful and sensible ones, even 'revolutions of normality' at times, like the next one:


One: the W factor

Slowly and uncertainly, right, but it is undeniable something is happening in the world regarding women, and their presence in society.
It can be discussed about the quantity and quality of this presence, still there are new events going on.

Politically, for example. One could mention the election of the first female Presidents or Prime Ministers in many countries, for the first time in their history.
Angela Merkel in BRD, Michelle Bachelet in Chile (not renewed though), Hillary Clinton in the US (as Secretary of State and at least as a President candidate), and the recent election of Laura Chinchilla as President of Costa Rica.

One could argue this is no news at all, it is enough to think about the role of Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Evita Peron and so on.
Right, but my point is that it seems there is finally a different quality in this now. Before a woman in politics was a 'media phenomenon', now I hope, it is becoming more 'normal'.
I say this because that is what counts: that it becomes perfectly normal and obvious for both a man and a woman to be elected, and govern a country, or have a decisive role in any other way.

Not fully aware of what women have meant in our World's history? Well, quite a lot of stories here: Biographies of notable women.

Nothing comparable yet to the time our societies were matrilinear, and there was a much better harmony in between the yin and the yang energies in society. Many original populations were like that, and still some native ones are, but everything changed after the intervention of the Arian Indo-Europeans in History, with their violent hunting and macho mentality and society structure.
Mentioned in the linked Wikipedia article, and for those who can read Italian I would suggest a very interesting book called:

Origini di storie (Gianluca Bocchi, Mauro Ceruti)

there is a lot about it in the first part of the book.
Worth to be explored is also the work of Marija Gimbutas

A last, simple wish, to start with: shouldn't the discrimination in wages, where a male gains more than a woman with exactly the same job, be finally eliminated, for the shame it is?


Two: Energy for the masses

Unfortunately I have to start this day's posting with the worst possible news: Barak Obama's announcement he will give eight billions dollars to the relaunch of Nuclear Energy in the USA.
As much as $54 billion in loan guarantees have been set for this goal in Obama's budget for 2011.

I have no words really for how outraged I feel, and for how much he is disappointing, beyond any limit. This is a complete capitulation under the nuclear lobbies, contradicting his support to the renewable future of America, and all that will have disastrous consequences for the entire world.

It doesn't take much to imagine all the governments in the World will have now a very good excuse to do the same.
"Obama does it, so why not us too?", they will say.

Let's face it, until a few years ago the world was still sane and the atomic energy was going to disappear. Now it is flourishing again, there are lots of countries that are building or plan to build new nuclear plants.
Even Italy included, as this horrific Berlusconi government, canceling the results of a referendum against it, has decided to build 4 to 20 third-generation new plants.

Again, until recently the picture was very clear and bright: the World was finally going to invest all their resources and hopes in renewable energies. This is the only choice that makes sense. Some fools can waste their time with dinosaurs technologies, but we will really enter the future when every single citizen in the World will produce his own energy, in small scale, by means of renewable sources and accumulating it using hydrogen or other means that will be developed.

You can read a very detailed critics of this nuclear loans madness in an article by Daniel J. Weiss, on climateprogress.org
And it is worth the time to read some of the comments to the article too.


Three: The Political split

What do I mean with 'political split'?

The split among the people and their political representatives. Between the old politics made of parties, ideologies, propaganda, and the modern one, made of Internet, single citizens and interest movements.

It would be naive to state that the newer way of making politics is always better than the old one, too simplistic.

In fact, the old parties were not completely negative, they provided for a certain stability, for education of the future politicians and for their selection.
They had coherent and solid ideologies, not prone to the fragmentation and volatility of today.
They had though also more than a tendency to become static, dogmatic, not free, corrupt, arteriosclerotic.

On the contrary, the new ways of doing politics are so fluid that they are unable to freeze;
and they are transparent, being continuously scrutinized by millions of eyes, the Internet users;
and, being not stably organized, they continue to exist only if there is some interest for them, otherwise they will simply die out, and be replaced by new ones.

The risks? I think they are too evident already: superficiality and triviality; self-obsession, with people thinking they are so smart and damn-right they end up being worse than the old politicians; narrowness.
I mean it is good to focus on specific issues, what interests you, but doing it all the time can lead to blindness for the bigger picture, to loosing a sense of the big whole and of what other people think and need.
Exactly the most important qualities a politician must have.

It is way easy to state that the traditional politics has violently failed, under many respects.
Or that democracies have become a farce and it is not bearable to continue like this, especially facing the huge and dramatic global challenges, as we all have to now.

Any case, a true revolution is going on, with the universal spreading of Internet and of all the various social networks.


Unfortunately I stopped blogging right at this point.
I had annotated the planned next posts, with some content. I will rewrite them, when I will have some time, trying to remember what I wanted to say about those themes.
Here they were, anyway:


Four: Food for thoughts


Five: Singles, families and communities


Six: Nationalism and world communities


Seven: Egotrips?


Eight: Internet and media


Nine: Bodymind


Ten: Enviroments