What's right, what's wrong ?
I was cleaning the roof of my mom's house, the sides, the gutters, so that water doesn't accumulate when it rains... I was remembering your fingers on the keyboard, and I played the Waldstein Sonata, Beethoven, in the background (do you have videos of you putting your stamp on this one, or the Pathetique, or the Appassionata?)....
.......... from the roof you can see the streets and an avenue (it's a corner house).... and there was an accident, not serious... a driver didn't see a sign, I guess...
(so many signs because we're thinking about our own things without paying attention or being able to put ourselves "somewhere else").
Every limit, every law, every instruction has to do with the inability to put ourselves in another person's position, or the inability to analyze a given situation from another perspective... the inability to do the "right" thing, to do the "good" thing (Obviously, I'm not talking about "everyone," just a majority and growing percentage, judging by the daily news)....
How to capture an idea, which has hundreds of facets, in a short, clear message, with minimal room for interpretation?
I'll try starting like this...
How much is enough? ...
Do "the right thing," but what is right?
When we are infants, then toddlers, and until we enter school, we are encouraged to do good, and the encouragement is a "happy face," a smile, a caress, a kind word... all of this triggers a series of neurotransmitters related to "endorphins," called "the feel-good hormone." Then, a cycle of wanting to repeat what we did well is generated, because of how good it makes us feel. This experience is recorded in our memory and, over time, becomes a kind of internal guide, which shapes our external behavior as human beings in interaction and relationships with others, wanting to "do good" for ourselves and for others.
Pavlov researched and clearly detailed this "conditioned reflex" in a simple and operant way, or by adding other factors. This is how we learn, internalize, and form appropriate value-based behavior... based on doing "good." But this does not last over time.....when entering primary school, positive stimuli to form behavior disappear and, in their place, abruptly appears "punishment" as a teaching method to control evil and achieve doing "good"....And this behavior is maintained until the end of our days.....and, it is taken for granted that achieving good is doing the right thing and, even more, it is taken for granted that all this is a "duty" and does not need any positive stimulus..... because "you are already older and you should know what is right and/or wrong...".....
Let's go back to childhood.....if caregivers did not have time, were careless or, left education in the hands of third parties.....the caress, smile, were replaced by a toy, or money or something "precious" from the material world....doing good begins to be conditioned to obtaining "personal material gain"....and the repetition of this, during growth, fixes and conditions the firm belief and behavior, in the mind of an adult: "I realize that doing good, doing the right thing, is what enriches and satisfies me personally... and if the result of this action is neither good nor positive for those around me, then that's not my problem... they'll have to find a way to satisfy themselves..".
And, furthermore, whether material or emotional, the reward for doing the right thing no longer exists, since it's assumed to be a "duty." Human beings begin to search for the prize, and with so much time invested in their search, the "reason why they were searching for it" disappears.... The prize becomes the "meaning of life"... it's personal, it depends solely on you, and it doesn't matter what state our "surroundings" are in, nor the consequences of all the decisions we make in pursuit of the prize, the holy grail, the golden fleece, the pot full of gold at the end of the rainbow......
And we never find that prize, no matter how much we fill ourselves with... the distance between what I have and what I desire is always the same.....
-extract of a letter for a friend. Author: Antonio Alex Pezoa Scharpe
An unexpected encounter
I'll tell you a hilarious anecdote that happened to me yesterday... and it raised another one of those questions that force us to relate situations, emotions, experiences, and what's happening in the world around us...
..... finishing work, I got off the elevator and, almost at the exit, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said "Hi Antonio!!"... I turned around and saw a woman a little taller than me, with short, neat hair, a brown skirt, a white blouse, and a tight leather jacket, a nice body... a kind of small purse, her face was familiar to me, but I couldn't place it at any point in my life... with a smile, she approached, kissed me on the cheek, and asked: "Don't you remember me?" looking into my eyes, while my face began to transform from perplexity to surprise, while a smile formed on my face as I recognized a different appearance: long hair, a t-shirt, jeans, sneakers, a little thinner, but with the same smile... "I'm Daniela Terpel. At university, I studied theater and switched to nursing."...
At that moment, neural pathways opened in the centers of my memory, and I remembered her fully... We were together for several months when I was in my second year of medical school, I think...
Hugs, laughter, and we went to a cafe to talk...
The point is this... this culture promotes the phrase "youth, divine treasure," but, particularly in the physical aspect... at the same time, it highlights "milestones" corresponding to each stage and that go hand in hand with what they call maturing. That is, behaving in a certain way depending on your age. The passage of time "crystallizes" and "hardens" a way of thinking through the repetitive use of only one part of the brain's neural pathways, which leads to precisely the opposite of the expansion of thinking, the use of intelligence, and the possibility of change. I have no problem with someone wanting to get breast augmentation, hip augmentation, lip augmentation, facelift, etc., but the contradiction between what they want to look like and their aging way of thinking, using their body, or behaving is becoming more and more aberrant...
On the other hand, we have those who are "restless" from birth to their final days... a perfect "harmony" between body and mind, seemingly always in keeping with their chronological age.
There are people in the world who are tremendously brilliant, intelligent, and "advanced" in the use of their body and mind...
When you contemplate public works of engineering like a bridge, certain architectural structures, elements used in medicine for surgery, incredible learning software, or a simple bottle opener... these are people absolutely open to the freedom of change, to adaptation, to creation... their body, their mind, and their age form an exquisite circuit in constant movement, never still, always "eager" for the new... one cannot remain impassive, one cannot help but see the exquisite use of different neural pathways and the interweaving of different visions to create something (as you do on the piano)... that is freedom, curiosity, and rebellion... that is "change," that is the basic characteristic of "youth." But that cannot be "bought" in a store, nor does it appear spontaneously when fixing one's personal aesthetics or remodeling one's body...
I realize that people "age" long before That their body is considered that of an "elderly adult" or someone of the "senior age"... there's no plastic surgery for that....
The difference between one's actual age and the body one shows is already altered by adolescence in the vast majority of cases... the "death" of the possibility of "change".......
Anyway, that chance encounter made clear to me this difference between the physical and the "mobility" or "immobility" of the internal structure of what one really "is"....
...... corollary, I am an adolescent and immature...... hahahaha hahaha......
-Extract from a letter to a friend. Author: Antonio Alex Pezoa Scharpe
Yesterday I felt incredibly tired, I must admit... I was and wasn't seeing patients... the day passed slower than ever!!!!... but it finally passed!!!
Regarding the message, I had to and have to delay it simply because I ran out of money (my taxes were substantial...)... You know the saying: "death and taxes"... Whether it was Benjamin Franklin or Daniel Defoe who popularized it, it doesn't matter... Equating both words, so unequal by the way, has become a cross that every citizen must bear everywhere in the world... The funny thing about this is that those who hold power, at least in South America and most likely also in Africa, always manage to minimize or make the payment disappear... hahahahahaha the word "shameless" or "heartless"... is too small for them...
I'm bored talking about this subject, but it's a reality in this country and in most South American countries... The inequality gap between those who have and the most dispossessed is... overwhelming... and, the "people without swing" who monopolize power are... I would say... evil.......Just as described by Gabriel García Márquez in "100 Years of Solitude" or Eduardo Galeano in "The Open Veins of Latin America".......And the funny thing is that, as a whole, it is a tremendously rich continent....there is everything...even one of the largest "lungs" on the planet.........but we do not row in the same direction....each one clinging to his purely personal interest (I am not saying that worrying about oneself is wrong....on the contrary...it is very important) and all the rest is just "fodder for the cows"....I am not saying either that being "rich" is wrong or harmful to society....if you want to be rich you can use your whole life to achieve it and it is your problem how you want to live your life.....being rich should not be a problem....what I see in South America, and in Africa too, is something that has to do with genetics....the path to wealth upsets the man or woman in these continents, some gene manifests itself and others are inhibited, changing the functioning of the neurotransmitters, and then, these people who reach power end up using old neural pathways, atrophying a good part of their already limited brains... ultimately, the result of these imbalances translates socially into a laziness towards thinking... and from other parts of the world, neither fools nor lazy, they come and take away what makes this land fertile and rich...
it is a stormy, devastating truth, whether whoever likes it or tries to deny it or distort it with "sophist" arguments, whoever takes advantage of this truth... but it is the truth and... the "truth is never sad"... what it has no "remedy"...
And I say that I am bored talking about this because I see no way out or solution to this truth... Ordinary people say "we are part of the evolved human being".... but evolution is not seen, no learning from history is seen.... what is seen is a continuous and sublime "recapitulation" of the way of To live....
What is the evolution of someone who was born with a cell phone, a bicycle, a skateboard, or a corkscrew in their hands? The "object" doesn't matter; it can also be a "feeling" (like the absurd "religious patriotic feeling" of those born in Israel or Palestine... and they die with that feeling without having changed a thing!!!!...) .....whether it's a feeling, a corkscrew, a cell phone, an airplane, a castle... you are born with it and knowing how to use it, and you die the same way... in that "living" there is no evolution.....
It is the "creators," those who use their brains, those who change things, some artists, some engineers, some teachers, a few ordinary people, those who have evolved.....and, my dear .....they are the minority..... the rest are born and die using what a few created, and they foolishly believe that by knowing how to use those objects, they have evolved..... Hahahahahaha... Albert Einstein said, very clearly in several speeches... <There are two "infinite" things in life... human stupidity and the universe... and I'm not sure about the universe> .... hahaha I got carried away by the simplicity of my answer and the depth of its effect....
I'll ask you later and answer other questions...
Now I have some things to do...
We talk in a while through "echoes that resonate in the air we breathe"......
-Extract from a letter to a friend. Author: Antonio Alex Pezoa Scharpe-
