Thursday, February 01, 2007
Saddam: from Dictator to Martyr (1 of 4) - from Iraq to the world
You have probably noticed some things that recently happened in the world…
Democrats won the intercalary elections (USA), in part, due to the presidential agenda in Iraq.
Tony Blair lost the leadership of his party (UK), in part, due to his implication in Iraq.
Zapatero (Spain) won the presidency of the government, against what the sounding said, due to bombings said to be connected to terrorist activities resulting the invasion of Iraq. Iraq leads the world panorama! For or against the military invasion of Iraq (began in March 2003), any neutral observer can verify that peace was not only unattained, as its vision doesn’t seem to be in the Iraqi population’s horizon. For or against death penalty, on the words of those who did it, the world lost one of the most terrible dictators ever: Saddam Hussein. Born in 1937, in Tiqrit, son of unknown father, Saddam, with only 21 years old was demonstrating his incapability to tolerance, killing his brother-in-law, from whom he diverged “politically”. Like other character who arrived to power, Saddam started from the bottom. After an absence of four years, he returned to his country, in 1963, to participate in the coup d’état which would lead him to power, in 1968, through the Revolutionary Command Counsil under the leadership of his cousin al-Bakr, from whom we would take the presidency in 1979, beginning a new period of conflicts in the zone. Saddam is held today, by the eyes of the ample majority of the people, as the main responsible of the Kurdish genocide (1988), that totalized five thousand deaths – like the Armenian genocide by the government of the Young Turkish, during the I World War; of the Jewish and Gipsy communities, at II World War, under the leadership of Hitler; of the Tutsis, in Rwanda, by Akayesu, who personally supervised the extermination; the genocide of the Bosnian population, in a total of eight thousand dead, under the power of Milosevic; the cultural genocide of the Bahá'ís in Iran, since the Islamic Revolution; the genocide perpetrated by the Janjaweed militias in the Darfur since, at least 2004, and that, due the absence of condemnation by the International Community spread, some months ago, to Chad. Today, the world is interlinked and it is worthless to close our eyes. Yesterday, Iraq wouldn’t influence global panorama, today the earth assumes itself as one country. Sam Cyrous
(published in Psicologia Actual, Portugal, January 2006). Labels: battle-war, death, Europe, leadership, values, violence, world unity
Saturday, January 27, 2007
From coward to brave...
That to which the coward goes is the opposite of that to which the courageous goes; the one, for example, is ready to go to battle, and the other is not ready. Plato
Protagoras in Protagoras or the sofists Labels: battle-war, courageous, Plato, values
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Twofold life (3 of 3)
Dwelling in that fear (that most times is not even conscious), each one of us strives to know the other... in an effort that only permits us to know what the other likes to read or do, what kind of food he/she is pleased by, or the type of movies he/she prefers... without understanding that we are keeping ourselves in a superficial plan. We do not know the true interests or the aims the other wants to achieve, we do not see the way he/she interacts in family or even what the conception of family may be. Preferring not to take a risk, we maintain ourselves in the ephemeral world of pleasures and diversion!
Diversion and pleasure are a part of life, undoubtedly! But the next reflection, the third step, should really be: “which is the aim, the objective: the pleasure by pleasure, or a twofold life?”. That is because a life of total hedonism has never permitted, nor shall ever permit, reaching a twofold life filled with meaning. Pleasure should be seen as a natural reward for something that is done, and not as an aim of everything we do!
And that is probably the biggest cause of couple-conflicts... or even couple-split: the shock when trying to live a twofold life, they find out they barely know each other and live two lives of one.
I once had the opportunity of observing, in therapy, a couple with decades of matrimony, then unstructured by suspicion, envy and dispute. Being asked by the therapist: “if it is so bad, then why did you marry him?”, she lowers her tone of voice, like in complicity with the therapist, or by shame, or perhaps simply by not having a better answer, she smiles and says: “you know, sex was too good!”.
Only when we have given the next step, finding responsibility in knowing the true character of the other, and not worrying only about the pleasures of life, we shall be able to reach that state in which hell is no longer the other (paraphrasing Sartre), and we start agreeing with Gabriel Marcel when he says “others, for me, are heaven”. Only in this state of transcendence one and one no longer are two, existing only as one being, new, that lives a twofold life.
Sam Cyrous
(published in Psicologia Actual, March 2006). Labels: couples, family, fear, meaning, values
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Twofold life (1 of 3)
Twofold life, or two lives? Probably, the first of all steps is defining the relationship in which each one finds him/her-self. Should we be talking about a life of feelings, emotions, values and objective sharing, or about two lives living together, related to each other and that have some things in common (house, expenses...)?
Sam Cyrous
(published in Psicologia Actual, Portugal, March 2006).
Labels: couples, emotions, feelings, values
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