THE POOR GOVERNMENT

As we did discover a few days ago watching all the MP scandal, all the governments in the world are corrupt. This happens primarily because the people in power are regular people, people who have the same rights than everybody. For instance they have the right to own a house, buy a car, trade stocks, manage their own bank accounts and some other rights that I think there aren’t quite appropriate for people in their position.

My first idea for a new type of government is to forbid the people in the government to own anything, not even their own clothes. Of course they will be provided with anything they may need, like food, clothes, communication and transportation, but none of these will be owned by them. It’s a simple idea but it can change radically the way politics are affected by money.

The person interested being part of the political part of the country must leave all material possessions and join the politicians at the special houses there will be available for them to live on. They will be able to enjoy some luxury and their kids will have the best education available (they better have because there won’t be any inheritance) and medical insurance and everything they need to have a comfortable and productive live.

This way I think we can reduce the corruption in our governments in a 98 %. Not a hundred because there is always someone who are going to find the crack on the system.

People in south America often thinks that government corruption is a problem that is exclusive of our culture, there is even some scientist that claims this issue to be a problem of the people who speaks Spanish as their mother language.  There are some cultural studies that contrast this problem here and in Europe showing that we are corrupt because there are more people in jail because conviction related to government corruption.  I’m starting to think that the real difference is that we have an strong policy about corruption and government money, and realizing that this is a biggest problem in our countries because we are poor, we need the money and we need to put behind bars everyone who steal from us, but it’s a different situation in the UK.

Maybe the problem of corruption is something that comes with the capitalism,  something we can’t shake of our backs.  Maybe the real problem is this hole idea of money and rich people and poor people. Don’t get me wrong I’m not pro Communism, I think Communism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin, that’s why there were so many corruption in the Soviet Union.  There is not so much of a difference in those two systems as people tend to believe, in fact they both depend of the concept of money.

There is always going to be people in the government stealing money no matter what we do unless we change our economic system into something more just and fair.  A democratic system able to avoid mixing money and politic, something like a computer government (A world rule by computers) or maybe we can create a new concept: A monastic ruling class with no  money, something like the Dalai Lama, but with real power and no money.

I have an extreme curiosity for all the aspects of that time because it’s the beginning of the modern age, and also extreme curiosity for the life of an artist and an engineer like Leonardo who was an important part of the group of men who built the foundations of modern science and art. It’s a interesting idea to ask him how did he perceived all that changes in the society of his time, the rupture with the dark ages and the beginning of the enlightenment.  What did he think of the relationship between man and God? What did he think about the nature?

Would also be interesting to ask him about all these great inventions he planed to do but never did, and tell him about how in the XX and the XXI century all of his machines are now part of the daily life. I guess he would not be surprised about the airplanes and the rockets, but he would be impress and shocked about the telephone, the computers and the robots. I would also tell him about how many scientists are trying to unveil the secrets he did leave in all his sketches, and all the arts critics trying to understand the secret behind the smile of his most important paint “MONA LISA”

He was a great weapon designer, almost like a modern military engineer. If I had the opportunity to talk to him I would also ask him about his opinion in war and humans killing humans. Not because I’m judging him, but to try to understand the meaning of life in that time.  I guess I would have thousands of questions to a man like Leonardo DaVinci, not just because he was a great man but because most of the things he did 400 years ago are still around us.

Of course you can’t think this issue from the catholic perspective if you want to come with an outcome that allow the scientist to continue this investigation.

First of all there is a common idea in the christian community that God never intended for us to have the right to manipulate our code. This part of the community claims that the very same statement of the commandment “YOU SHALL NOT KILL” implies that we have no right to manipulate our DNA structure. Also they claim that discharging conceived embryos is the very same as murder. (and many of this studied need embryos to extract the main material)

So,in one hand there is advantages and new opportunities for the human race to improve not only our health but enlarge our life-spam and the quality of our day-to-day live.

In the other hand there is a group of the community that think that God doesn’t want us to do this research.

Well obviously there is some others ethical issues I haven’t consider to this point such as the distribution of this technology so we can avoid generate a DNA-enhanced-rich community and a poor-regular-DNA society located in the third world countries. Right now is happening in the US and Great Britain that some couples are selecting their kids based in a complete study that looks up for possible genetic diseases. This kind of technology is not available for the people in this part of the planet because is so expensive.

Also there is the danger that enhanced soldiers created by some powerful countries will take over the world, or genetically enhanced brains that could create new weapons or new control techniques to dominate the regular human kind.

And we should never forget to be prepared for possible new viruses designed add accidentally release from an obscure lab in the woods.

although it’s a very dangerous tool genetic research could end up with the cure for diseases that kill millions, if they are in the right hands. or kill millions or oppress them in the wrong hands. I guess is the same with gun powder, nuclear fusion and TV, all of them have the possibility to generate a great world for human kind but also to end up lives.

But Why impose a ban on facebook? Isn’t there many others sites more dangerous like blogger or word-press where people can express in a more traditional way?  In 2007, here in Colombia, there were a group of five facebook users that invite people to march against violence in an specific date. With a little support of the mainstream media and the government this group grow until there were several millions people marching in every city of Colombia and several thousands in the US, Europe and Asia.  Examples like this proves that facebook can be a very powerful tool to politics and politicians. The secret of this success lays in the core of the site, in the idea of sharing your personal life and thoughts with your friends. We all are friends on facebook.

If this is such a powerful tool for politics and politicians, Isn’t a good idea for a totalitarian government to ban it? (First of all I’m absolutely in favor of the freedom of speech, I’m not saying that this ban is good on an ethical sense, is more like a hypothetical approach.)  There is also an advantage, mainstream media seems to think sites like facebook, myspace or blogger aren’t important. There is always an uprising of the media when there is a violation of the freedom of speech that affects the traditional media (like newspappes and TV) but in the case of facebook nobody seems to care. Why? because facebook is supposed to be frivolous and even stupid… Because it’s not part of the traditional media.

But it’s still a violation of the right that every one should have to express freely and this is not to take lightly. Although the government says they have no business in this ban, the fact is that some facebook users can’t access the site, they are being shut up by technological means.

A good thing of the new media is that there are more choices for everybody that facebook. Even if you want to install your own social networking platform you can use several free services to host and promote your site and escape for government control (at least for a while).  That’s why the government  prefer to shut down the Internet in Cuba, so they have not to worry about the bolggers.

I think no country have the right to use nuclear weapons, not even the US. This bombs are so power full that we are in constant danger of extinction just because their exists. We just need to go back to the 90′s and remember how some of this bombs of the Soviet Union were sold to other countries when the Communism fall down and the government responsible for this weapons no longer exists. What would happen in the US if the Union brake apart? Who would be in control of the thousands of missiles? It’s a hypothetical question but I think the only way we could be assure is to destroy all nuclear weapons in the world.

Not even countries with a strong democracy have the right to have and to use this kind of weapons, they are so dangerous we can’t risk to accidentally fire them and finish the whole live in this planet.  No one is secure while this bombs are still around.

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World outraged by North Korea’s latest nuke test (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/05/24/nkorea.nuclear/index.html)

Animals, just as humans, were created by nature to be free, not in cages. That’s why most of the have strong legs and big wings, so they can run trough their habitat and live the live they are supposed to. I think all the creatures of nature have the rigth to be free, this is not only a human privilege.  The so called freedom of the human kind is not complete if is based in the confinement of other creatures.

One important point in this discussion relates to the “moral right” that humans tend to associate with the superior development of  their brains.  The occidental tradition says that we humans are the most important creatures in the world and that all of the other creatures are here to serve us.  Both religion and science give us the idea that is morally correct to imprison this animals because they are no humans and only humans feel the way we feel and are capable of self awareness. But  other cultures, for example the people in India, believe that animals and humans are at the same moral level, and respect the live and freedom of animals as well as humans. I think no one point the human race to tell what animals have rights and what animals don’t

Like it or not we live in a complex ecosystem and is our duty to repair the damage we have done in the past to this species. Allowing them the space they deserve to develop so they don’t get extinct. Above all we live in the same planet and in many cases we depend on them for our own support. Protecting them is the same than protecting us, imprisoning them is cutting their chances to reproduce and survive, that way in am few years there will be no more ecosystem for all the live in Earth to survive.

I think the zoos are a bad idea for a lot of reasons, some of them are moral, some of them are ethical and some of them are practicals.

I’m Dmonka (not my actual name but my nick on the web), I’m a 33 years old Colombian digital arts teacher. I have been living in Bogota my hole life. I’ve never studied English before but I learned it form the American media that you get by cable and the Internet.

I like mostly science fiction books and movies, love Babylon 5 and StarTrek, don’t like so much music and party. I been working with technology for 15 years since I was at the film academy in the national university of my country, but I developed a huge interest in this topic at my second year of post-graduate studies in fine arts trough the relation between the digital media and the human body. That was a very complicated topic for my master thesis but I found the post structural theories of Deleuze (french philosopher) and understand that we are physical human beings and media bodies at the same time. (this only apply for people on urban environments…)

Well I think this is good enough for a presentation, I’m sorry if I can’t be more specific but… well you know.