[Wed Mar 27 19:00:08 CDT 2019]

De cuando en cuando, me gusta dedicarle un par de días a leer números atrasados de Tricycle, la revista budista estadounidense. A menudo, incluye artículos y reflexiones que me parecen interesantes y sugerentes. Por ejemplo, leyendo el artículo titulado The Gift of Fear, escrito por el escritor Dharmavidya David Brazier, me encuentro con el siguiente párrafo sobre

Clearly, there is a range within which fear puts us on our toes and brings out our best. When there is too little, we become complacent, bored, and lazy. When there is too much, we become paralyzed. When I first began speaking in public, I sometimes would sweat and shake and be unable to even get my words out. I found that the best thing was simply to tell the audience that I felt terribly nervous, which to my surprise allowed me to relax a bit and the audience to become more sympathetic. And the thing went off all right.

From experiences like this I realized that the venom that paralyzed me was not so much the fear as the pride that made me try to hide the fear, that wanted me to present myself as a master over my human nature. But when I could be natural and share how I was feeling, a bond was established with the audience. Fear can connect people.

El artículo Walking Backward Toward the Future, de Jonathan Bricklin, comienza con la siguiente cita del filósofo Soren Kierkegaard:

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Por su lado, leyendo Is the Dharma Democratic?, de Kurt Spellmeyer, nos encontramos con la siguiente reflexión sobre la exclusión y la identidad colectiva:

At each stage in the process, an excluded group moves from the margins of society into public life as full participants. Now the voiceless get to speak their truth. Those who have been beaten to the ground can rise up, so that justice may be done. If we’re looking for the parinama of democracy, we’ll find it with the excluded and their struggle for inclusion. Here, though, is the “never-ending” part. The very nature of belonging depends on excluding someone—nuns, laymen, laywomen, Mexicans, Syrians, Muslims, in short, anyone unlike those on the inside.

En Circling Lhasa, de Judith Hertog, leemos sobre la idealización del Tibet que hemos ido creando en Occidente desde hace ya muchísimo tiempo ("Westerners still see Tibet as either a reflection of themselves or as a symbol of their yearnings"). El siguiente breve diálogo entre la autora, visitante del país como profesora de inglés, y su anfitrión es de antología:

“You are so lucky to live here,” I said stupidly. Tsering responded that Lhasa was actually quite boring.

“But people dream of living here!” I objected.

“I don’t mind changing places, then,” said Tsering. “You should try living without electricity or modern hospitals.”

Finalmente, Bhutan on the Brink, de Matthieu Ricard, incluye una extensa entrevista con Karma Phuntsho, educado en Bután y en Oxford, y que, de regreso a su país, lamenta en parte la acelerada modernización por la que está atravesando su sociedad y sus secuelas. Quizá la parte más interesante sea la siguiente:

Alcoholism is a good example. If you look at a Bhutanese village, like my village, you have a lot of people who drink. But their drinking cannot go unchecked. Alcohol is produced locally. You’ll never have unlimited grain to make it, so that’s a natural constraint. Also, say an alcoholic comes to a house asking for alcohol. The residents of the house may give it to him because it’s the custom—in moderation, of course. He may beg for more, but after a while the lady or the man in the house will say, “Stop drinking. You’re overdoing it.” They’re part of the same close-knit community. You know, if this man fell sick, there would be repercussions for the whole village. So there is the sense of being responsible for each other.

But take that same alcoholic out of the village and put him in Thimphu [the capital city]. In the city, there’s no limit on resources. These drinks that you get in bars are mass-produced in distilleries. What does the barman do? He’ll make as much profit as he possibly can by selling as much booze as possible. Also, there’s no peer support unless you know the barman and the barman happens to care about you. Usually, though, there’s the anonymity that comes with living in a city; people don’t recognize you, so you care less about your reputation, which removes yet another constraint.

That’s the kind of transition Bhutan is going through, moving from that original rural community with its safeguards and support systems, to the anonymity and rootlessness of the town. We’re adopting many new things that we don’t know how to handle well. And if we don’t learn how to handle them very fast, it will be a major problem. If, though, we make the right decisions and implement the right programs, since our population is small we can change the course of things, pull ourselves back from the brink. I don’t know if I mentioned any optimism in my book. Maybe a little bit.

Se trata, sin duda, de una mirada algo diferente sobre el que algunos consideran "el país más feliz del mundo" y que en parte puede recordarnos al acelerado proceso de modernización que vivimos en España en su momento. {enlace a esta entrada}

[Fri Mar 8 09:07:55 CST 2019]

Ya sé que el movimiento éste de las identidades minoritarias y lo políticamente correcto se supone que es muy de izquierdas. Y también sé que cualquier crítica que se les haga suele interpretarse como cercana a la ultraderecha de Vox y compañía. Sin embargo, son demasiados los elementos que considero preocupantes como para permanecer callado, aunque yo siempre me haya identificado con la tradición de izquierdas. Hace unos días, por ejemplo, leíamos en la web de El País que los alumnos de Harvard pedían que se expulsara como profesor a uno de los abogados de Weinstein. Al parecer, su imperdonable delito es pertenecer al equipo de defensa del conocido productor de Hollywood, acusado de acoso sexual por múltiples mujeres. Lo siento mucho, pero no puedo condonar este tipo de amenazas inquisitoriales, por más que se me presenten como progresistas. El comportamiento de los estudiantes me parece dogmático, intolerante, impositivo e inquisitorial. Me parece más digno de la Joven Guardia Roja china durante los temibles años de la Revolución Cultural maoísta que de unos estudiantes universitarios en un país occidental. Cualquier persona (repito: cualquiera, incluso un acusado de terrorismo o cualquier otro crimen atroz) tiene derecho en nuestro sistema legal a un juicio digno con una defensa. Se trata de una conquista que costó mucho esfuerzo conseguir como para que un grupo de niños mimados incapaces de aceptar opiniones contrarias a la suya lo tiren ahora por la borda. {enlace a esta entrada}