Meditations

3/07/07
What is a victory without compassion? If all the defeated were aware of the need the victorious has of getting recognition for his well-done job, humanity would avoid many a long war.

23/06/07
Hollywood cinema is an iconic cinema. Spectators see images that tell the tale. Their connotation is unique. Poor cinema is indexical. Spectators see images that suggest multiple images. Wise producers might save money by triggering imagination.  Not surprisingly, independent cinema, third-world cinema and European cinema appear to be more creative.

22/06/07
So far, no philosopher has pointed out the differences between smiling and laughing.  People smile of joy, as they laugh of scorn. The sensitivity of a man, as well as the sensitivity of a culture, could be measure by their promptness to laugh.

21/06/07
The earth trembled today. A small earthquake. I wasn't scared.  What should I fear? Also in Central Asia, three years ago, we where in a car out of control, over an icy road. I learnt long ago that there is no real probability of us surviving for another twenty minutes. But still we go on living. Another metaphysical problem to take into consideration, that's to say, another non-scientific fact to wonder about.

16/06/07
I spite of the progress of technology, our civilization remains quite irrational. The main culprits are Descartes, Leibnitz and Kant. Isaac Asimov distinguishes reason from logic in one of his novels - I read it in 1987. After twenty years I have come to the conclusion that there are many logics, each one belonging to a given homogenous system. Reason is the faculty to understand the manifold nature of logic.  It is through reason that we distinguish ethics from morality; diplomacy from war. Kant's Critique of the Pure Reason is in reality a critique of the pure logic [of perception.]

11/06/07
It is not vanity, but hypocrisy that characterizes humanity. We live in a whirlwind of lies, conventions, and compromises. I have tried to be as sincere as possible, assuming the consequences of my actions and statements. Such behavior has granted me the admiration and the hate of many a friend, to the point that I  no longer believe in friendship.

07/06/07
During the last year the citizens of Colombia have become victims of bank corruption and inefficiency. After 12 years in Europe and the US I came back to Bucaramanga in 2005. As I started to work I opened a bank account in Banco de Bogotá. Everything went fine for a while, until in February 2007 about US$1000 dollars vanished from my account. I wrote to Banco the Bogotá. After a 1-month delay they sent me copies of a cash machine. Their employees explain me that according to Banco de Bogotá “someone” had withdrew my money from Bogotá cash machines, a city about 250 miles from my town (!). Since I had paid for a pair of shoes with my debit card that very day, just four hours before the scalp, I assumed I was going to get the money back. Banco de Bogotá, nevertheless, ignored my letters. Their silence entitled me to take legal action. According to the Colombian law, a citizen is able to ask a judge to decide on penal or civil matters, if a given firm ignores his/her written letter for more than two weeks. But as soon as the process started, the judge contacted Banco de Bogotá. In less that one day Banco de Bogotá issued an official response to my letter, stating that I, and only I –or a person authorized by me-, had withdrawn the money, and underlying the fact that they were absolutely sure that none of their workers had had access to my pin number or my card (?). The judge decided then to close my case, stating that since my letter had been answered, there was no reason for him/her to proceed (!).These circumstances raise many questions about the ethics of the Colombian Banks and about their relationship with the judicial system.

Banco de Bogotá just expect me to be happy with the fact that I might lose 1000 dollars due to their lack of security, inefficiency, corruption or mismanagement. The most revealing circumstance, though, is that Banco de Bogotá called my office soon after to let me know that due to a breach in their security system I had to change my pin number. Later on I learnt that they had called thousands of customers that day. It also happened that soon after their entire website of Banco de Bogotá was revamped, and that direct e-payments were constrained, to the point that now you should get a call from them in order to authorize the payment of the gas.

It is obvious, therefore, that someone or some people cracked their security system, getting all the necessary information to clone my debit card. In any civilized country a Bank would have assumed its responsibility. Not in Colombia, The right action would be for Banco de Bogotá to take action for their flaws. After all, I’m not the one of charge of their security system!
But my case is not alone. In the last few years, Colombian citizens had lost thousands of dollars in the same way, and since there is impunity, I can anticipate that this sort of robbery will increase in the coming months, until some honest judge decide to oblige the Colombian bank guild to take responsibility for their wrongdoings.

5/6/07
People from the province of Santander, Colombia, are well-known for their envy.  Such feeling, nonetheless, is perhaps the most common, together with scorn -as Schopenhauer pointed out, and can be easily discovered and experienced from Alaska to Mozambique. An essay to be written.

01/05/07
How to survive as an unrecognised artist? Don’t read newspapers or magazines. They are only interested in success. Artists will either lose hope or end up imitating the stupidity they praised.

30/04/07
When does a man realise the end of youth? When he is unable to jump.