mirrors to outside

only for male feminists, #5

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 11:50:59 +0100

Just like any other stay-at-home parent, most of the weight of the formal and mandatory education of my son falls on me. Logically so, no doubt. Nobody would expect Chantal, after having a full day at the office, come home to work on the homework of our son, would you? Moreover, being Chantal the musically gifted, and the dutch native-speaker, she already got on her the daily guitar practicing and the daily reading of one or another dutch classic to our little one. So there is no way around it, when we are talking about sitting him down and forcing him to suffer with homework meanwhile we both hear his friends out in the street, it is my task.

Which actually, it is not always as bad as it sounds. I do like to teach. Of course, to teach to somebody close to you is a peculiar thing, but still. Working our way through one or another math puzzle, I wait to see the sudden lightning of the "I get it" moment. Or the other moments, when Ayden turns to me and ask: "why don't they teach this at school?" I mean, even here, in the core of the first world, in a country with an excellently internationally ranked education, even here, the teaching of simple math in basic school is dreadful. But well, that's why we parents are at home, waiting and sharpening our preferred topics to inflict them on our kids, hoping for some brighter future for them.

Anyhow, those are the nice moments. There are other moments too, when being a probably-better-informed-than-the-teacher and migrant parent is not so much of a hot combination. The moments in which you are actually asked to go to the school, and discuss the results of your son with the teacher. Trying to stay silent through slow descriptions of irrelevant (according to you) developments in your kid, hoping that the time allocated to you will not be over before getting to the issues that you care for. Or far worse, becoming more and more aware of your mangled dutch, meanwhile trying to make yourself understandable to a teacher that have only ten minutes to talk to you, after having talked with ten parents, and before talking with the following ten. Is she thinking that you are as stupid as you feel, in this foreign language? Somewhere you have read that a relevant percentage of the evaluations that teachers make of students depend on their evaluation of their parents. So you want to come across as nice, intelligent, well informed. Good luck to you, dear boy. I hope that this teacher only evaluates Ayden, and not me.

And still the other moment, the one upon us right now. The moment of choosing college for your son, in a culture that even if sympathetic to you, remains foreign. The moment of founding myself arguing with Chantal about the goal of colleges. Are they meant to potentiate the social capacities of your son? Or rather to empower him with basic tools of understanding? Should colleges be a reflection of the society at large? Or could they actually represent a minority that you are sympathetic with? Questions that nobody can categorically answer, but also questions to which different cultures provide very different answers. What do you do when your beloved wife seems to think that your son of 12 should decide which school to go, meanwhile you think that the choice is on you two? And what if you think that the vibes of a school are far too groovy, meanwhile your wife love the grooviness? What do you do then, with your own image of being cool and groovy, discovering that actually you are far more conservative that your beloved one?

Luckily enough, above and beyond the culture chasm, Chantal and me share some few things. One of them the desire of checking things in time. So right now, when Ayden is actually 11 and we all have almost two full years to make a decision, all this visiting is merely exploratory. I suppose that, as in many other issues, we will keep on talking and talking after Ayden is in bed, talking and talking up to reach some sort of consensual compromise. Yeah, after all the dutch polder model is not that bad, not that bad at all.

migration to the mirror

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:25:33 +0100

There is the small moment, the instant. The second where you, and all of them around you, know that something has happened, that the tone and the content of the conversation has taken that turn that none of you wanted. Somebody said something, and would like to take those words back. But it's always late. The bad thing is that the turn isn't that bad. All of you understand that somehow, that faux pas shouldn't made anybody feel guilty. It was just a follow up. But it's a blunder all the same. You try to go on, and you can't. You have got the tiny black spot in the white carpet, the baby elephant in the tupperware fabric. There is no way back, gotta move on, but nothing is the same again.

When C arrived to Venezuela -and probably today as well- argentinians were the easiest people to make fun off. Argentinian were -and probably are- reasonably proud of their country, surely in comparison with their neighbors. Moreover, they are proud of themselves and their superior culture. No surprise that their fellow south american think of argentinians as hard to bear. To begin with, that is. It follows then that in all of south america are uncountable jokes about argentinians being... well, argentinians. C landed in the late seventies in caracas. Learning the ropes of a new city, integrating as it is called today, implied hearing those jokes and develop some sort of skin -elephant skin- on them. To be insulted by a joke would be ridiculous and diminishing. C, as many others, actually learned not to hear those jokes. Even when they were actually fun. Fun inside one group. C laugh endlessly with other argentinians about their own jokes. Just as venezuelans did. With their own company. that was. But in a mixed reunion? In a mixed reunion was difficult to make fun of each other. Of each other's culture, of each other's identities. And still somebody would eventually do it, and the faux pas would be made, and the fun would be gone.

Just gone.

It felt as the uprooting of migrating made us all insecure. The resident not wanting to repeat a known blunder, the newcomer waiting for it to happen. C stubbornly repeating to himself to stay cool, stubbornly getting more irritated by the minute, with himself. In the wc, a minute later, C would stare at the mirror, angry. Why to be so stupidly... arrogant and fragile? Could he not be better than the bloody joke? The insult, the real and definitive hurtful thing wasn't the insulting joke, actually, but the own and endless capacity to transform a joke into an insult. How stupid can you be, shout C to the mirror.

Angry at that insulting mirror.

only for male feminists, #4

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:41:45 +0100

The day draws to an end, and I wait for my son to round up his aikido lesson. It is a cold room, with a half way open door through which I can see the kids careening in their white kimonos. Some updating of my inbox, in the mostly weak neighbor's wifi and some sms exchange with a good friend to plan an incoming dinner date. At the end she asks: "and has Chantal confirmed the date? D'you remember?" Referring, I guess, to the many times that Chantal or her husband have made appointments, to later discover that the actual agenda of one or another partner did not actually allowed the appointment to go on. And not only with them. How many times have I cooked dinner for a non coming guest? how many times has Chantal arrived home asking about guests coming... in a week? We live in complicated times, and our agendas can tell you so right away. The art of interfamily agenda management definitively belongs in the curriculum of any running-the-house-male-feminist, as myself.

Being capable of doing some programming of my own, more than once I have wondered if my breakthrough to fame and money would not be the making of an app where agendas of a family could be perfected synchronized across internet, in desktops, laptops and mobiles, in real time and without a click. But well, I am not so keen into diving in the iOS SDK now. Instead, we keep on relying in a combination of a shared google calendar, plus 3g networks carrying proposals and confirmations of potential dates. Not being perfect, our system does yield a level of stochasticity in our appointments that could be considered as an added value to the adventures that every petit bourgeois family should have. Always ready for the "don't you remember? The Sanders are arriving in five minutes". Friends that are then doomed to experience my own version of linguini ali oli, or the aubergine thai curry, being those the two dishes that I can deliver in five minutes flat. It is actually fun to live knowing that now and then you have to cook in hyperspeed. Maybe I should write an app that not only perfectly synchronize every other agenda, but also includes some level of community networking, so more agendas can be included into our own, as randomization factors.

That would be, if you want, the perfect consequence of our hyper connected present, where I am aware not only of the whereabouts of my family in Buenos Aires (via phone) but also of my family in Caracas (via email) and my friends in Hawai (via facebook). And of more friends in numerous other locations, but let's not mention those quite right now. Neither to mention the whole bunch of acquaintances, friends and colleagues closer by. People that actually determines what I do with my free time. Or how I feel about it. Have you not feel blue because some unseen-in-twenty-years friend with whom you keep contact in facebook have been dumped today by the girlfriend that you never got to know? I have. No way that I will cook something nice that day. No way that my family will escape the -mostly boring and for then uninteresting- tale of the good old days when I meet him, of his goings and comings, and all what happened in the meantime. On the other side of the spectrum, we also have had these wonderful days where we heard that Joe finally got a girlfriend, or a new job, or finally found a house to buy! Good old Joe, how wonderful! And it doesn't really matter that we have not seen Joe in a decade or more, since we have keep him present in our virtual memory. And we are all happy and mushy due to good old Joe and his new girlfriend/job/house.

In my twitter feed the comments on google plus and its extended social search are beginning to trickle. Not very positive. Which is quite interesting. Because here am I, figuring out my own way in an universe of socially connected information, and I -and many more like me- actively reject the idea of google helping us to order the chaos. After all that's what they did with the internet. Would we not like that they do the same with our social ties?

Looks actually that we don't. Maybe our social ties, even when empowered by internet and the rest, is the last refuge for us to control our surroundings. Maybe it is so that even when I cringe at the chaos of my friends and their plans, I do not want nothing nor nobody to order it.

After all, we parents at home have to retain something to bring order into, no?

only for male feminists, #3

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 22:57:40 +0100

It is true that retro is kind of cool lately. Lately as of in the last decade. Anyhow, due to the before-was-better feeling I was slightly discomforted when looking at my family earlier today, 25 December. My father in law mumbles to himself at the keyboard of his desktop, his girlfriend struggles with her new ipad, my son plays something in his iphone, my beloved run some tests in her laptop. I am -of course- reading a just received reprint in my macbook. And smiling when comparing our family moment with the retro postcard of a happy family reading the newspaper together.

Anyhow, we have no time to chat -with each other-. We are about to depart for a stroll in the wild, but before we have to hear the queen, in her yearly christmas speech. Which is no doubt a retro thing for me (as in several centuries retro) and a new thing for my beloved. Having lived all her life in NL, she has managed not to hear the queen ever before -in christmas-. But hey, we are under the roof of my in-laws, and they want to hear queen Beatrix, in their words "the last thing that unite all dutch". So hearing we will do, and I promise myself not to laugh, not to look upset at what is coming. Actually I'll go on doing something in my laptop, and perhaps I'll get distracted and manage not to hear what her majesty have to tell us, her subjects.

Which is not certain. I might manage to hear the queen meanwhile I do some work in the computer. After all, these years of being the spouse at home did teach me to multitask. Yes I can do it, and I believe that I learned it having the role of a traditional woman. Take a critical look at all those times that you have heard that women are better at multitasking. Is it women really? Or is it the woman that stays at home raising the kids, cooking, cleaning? How else could she possibly cope, without some serious multitasking abilities? So here I am, after having gone missing from the academic and the corporate world, in possession of one of the abilities oh so regarded by the labor market today, multitasking. And me without having any intention to get any job anytime soon. It is an unfair world indeed.

Funnily enough, that seems to be an issue today, in the queen's speech. I can hardly believe it but she is talking about unfairness. Has the queen gone Marxist? Nope, it is actually more surprising than that. She has gone green! Because now she is talking about the earth and our evil wasting of her resources. I can see all my green dutchies rubbing their palms in ecstasies: the queen has gone green! Me myself, I wonder if the queen is multitasking right now. Defining multitasking as doing two (or more) very different things at the same time. Because after all she is the queen, living one of the most unsustainable life styles that you could possibly imagine. And asking her subjects to be green. For a second my hypothesis of rising-kids-make-you-multitasking goes wrong: obviously the queen did not raise her kids, nor cooked for the prince, nor cleaned the palace. Maybe she is a natural.

But again, she is not multitasking. What she is doing is preaching something and being the opposite. Yes I know, she probably means it. Yes I know, it is good indeed that such an opinion maker as the queen is -in this country- gets to go green. Twitter and the blogosphere will boil with it in the coming hours, perhaps days. The newspapers will follow, the opinion programs in the TV as well. We greens (and more important, our message) will get some extra attention, sorely needed attention that is. But it also illustrate one green tragedy. Most of us greenies, are actually part of a lucky elite that can afford to be green. An elite that lives a profoundly unsustainable life, but works for a green future.

An hour later I am not multitasking any longer. Walking outside in whatever restored meadow gets to be called nature in the dutch countryside, I am letting my thoughts go loose. There where some pretty nice ideas in that paper. My son is running after his grandfather hundred meters away form me. Is that a ditch where they are heading to? Networks seems to be more robust if they are part of bigger -weighted- networks. I will have to refresh my fading knowledge of percolation to check the equations. My son just skipped to fall in the water. No doubt that multitasking and walking outside in a mild winter day is a luxury. The luxury of following the science that I want, of walking where I want. The luxury of having the time for hoping all persons could enjoy some green in their lives. The luxury of staying at home, the luxury of supporting my beloved at the home front. The luxurious life of a multitasking feminist.

Merry christmas to you, too.

the prodigal son as a migrant

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 10:25:11 +0100

Parables. Fables and metaphors, similes or tales. Tales. Making a point with a tale. Actually, the art of making a point with a tale. Ever tried? Ever tried to balance yourself in between the risks of being trivial or being contorted, between making it boringly obvious or unreliable complicated? The right middle point between the populist politicians that we all despise, and the bureaucrat that nobody understand. A tightrope. Which actually has been well trodden. Aesop, Aeschylus, La Fontaine. The Bible. Indeed the Bible, that collection of tales ever referring to something else, to that something else that we wouldn't get otherwise. And the ongoing doubt. Did we get it actually? Would that be the power and the weakness of a good tale? The idea -but not the certainty- that you "got it"? The relief of having understood something, and the remaining tension of thinking that you -perhaps- didn't.

Take the prodigal son, for example. You get it, right? The kid want to see more, being the idea of "more" an insult to his well established family. Why would he want to go away? Still he goes, and still the family was right, because he comes back. Time to be righteous and have a moment of "I told you so"? No. Time to be fair and honor the son that did the right thing, that did not get away? Neither. Time for grace, for forgiveness, for reunion. A real saintly thing to do, actually.

And still the whole parable rubs me the wrong way. Why would be the going away wrong? Is the Writer telling us migrants that we have take the wrong path? that we will have to come back, and on top of that... that we will be welcome back only if our family is, well, saintly?

Do we have to be forgiven if we go away? Or only when coming back?
Will be always come back?
Could it be that we migrants are always coming back?

Let's stay with that last one. If there is something that upsets me about the migrant-integration discussion is the assumption that the residents have some extra rights acquired by the -random- event of having born somewhere. As if me being born in Argentina gives me the right of telling Venezuelans how to behave, if they happen to go to Buenos Aires. Now think that all migrants are always coming back, some sort of prodigal sons. After all, we are sons of the same Father, no? Should we not forgive that sin of having born somewhere else, should we not celebrate the homecoming of that long lost and recovered brother?

What is it then? Is the going away a sin that only a saintly family can forgive, a sin whose redemption goes above the recognition of the simple and daily good behavior of others -which, if you want, is the origin of that other feeling of wrongness that positive discrimination policy gives-. Or are those who arrive long lost sons coming back, to be cherished and welcomed?

Would it be nice if we would know?

I guess not.

only for male feminists, #2

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:14:14 +0100

When you have any kind of writer's aspiration it is a crime to read those you like too often. I just read some Chandler again, and feel like writing in short sentences, half of them wise cracks. I have a mix of anger and despise for the world. I even considered to change the signature of my emails to "Tarzan in a big red scooter", that line from a successful hoodlum to ridicule our man Marlowe, always cheap, always in love with the wrong blonde, always rightful. Tarzan in a big red scooter. All the same, being today the husband of my wife, I can have a remote resemblance with that Marlowe. Not that I look in any way like Bogart, nor she has the likes of Bacall. Not by my lack of trying anyhow. But things are as they are, one could say. The real Marlowe would have thought so, I hope.

I guess that being the partner that stays at home today has some sort of foolish romanticism, foolish enough so that you are actually the only one that gets the romantic part. I wonder if my family would actually be the same if I would have followed the well trodden path, that one that most of your friends followed. Not that Marlowe doubted, but almost. Every time you read it, you think that in the next sentence he will doubt, but he doesn't. He is what he is. On my side, I wonder if I would be the same on the trodden path. For one I would not have learned to cook, going to a standard field job. I would have had less time to see my son growing, and I wouldn't have seen the tired smile of my wife coming home and resting in my arms, in that moment that she realizes that she has come home, and her working time is over, that I will take over now. I wouldn't have heard that sigh in my ear, being the one that opens home's door for her. Not that many times, at least. I wouldn't have tasted the sweet and the sour of being the one waiting at the school doors when they open and let the small one come to me.

At the other side you wonder how much you missed when you choose out. That cynicism that you carefully treasure might not be there at all. Organizations and their petty wars for matchsticks control, corporations and their stupid board battles, the sad political power games inside academia. All this is far away from you now, so that you can comfortably criticize it and despise it. But what if you would be part of it, what if you would have stayed in? Maybe you would not have that sour taste in your mouth, that crooked smile when reading yet another published paper that is worth nothing, and still has a big laboratory and government money behind. Maybe you would be kinder with your fellow humans and their pettiness. Maybe you would be more integrated. You might be producing papers yourself. You wouldn't be in that red scooter -or in your actual old black race bike- more likely in a Prius. You wouldn't feel like Tarzan -at least at times- neither.

Of course, you wonder if you would have liked it. Is the world nicer when looking at it from inside? Can you really look at it from inside? As a matter of fact, can you claim that you are outside?

Ah, Marlowe. I must smile my crooked smile again when thinking in Marlowe. Just to think that there is any reasonably connection with that character and the life of a stay at home father, consultant at times, amateur cook and loving husband. You gotta be kidding pal. Probably kidding yourself. Or the world must have made some weird turns.

The world has done some weird turns all right.

only for male feminists, #1

Thu, 8 Dec 2011 12:58:39 +0100

It was back in the nineties when a Swiss-Serbian lab associate and friend introduced me to Tom Waits. I was (and thinking about it still am) painfully ignorant of whatever might sound like blues and bar music, so I got "small change" for starters. That same weekend I went out and got "Nighthawks at the diner" and "The hearth of Saturday's night". I wouldn't hear anything else for weeks. The delights of Wait's innovations came later, much later. At that time of being a foreign, recently divorced and without good prospects theoretical biology researcher in Europe, the early years of Tom Waits’ music were just perfect. I remember the lyrics still today, raising a nostalgic grin more often than not. From Emotional Weather Report, for example: "to come back and everything in your refrigerator turns into a science project"

The other day I open it and most of my refrigerator was, actually, a science project.

Differently than in Tom Waits song, though, I was not fishing for waitresses in some crummy bar. More like the real Tom Waits, actually, I am already ten years in what mostly is a very happy marriage. One kid, a satisfactory salary, time to criss-cross Europe for holidays, time for dive and even time for participate in the politics of my like, when I like it. Why would I complain if my fridge is not as clean and shinny as it should be? Actually that wasn't a complain, was it?

Perhaps it was. Perhaps the attempts of my beloved wife to stay in contact with her inner, and long gone, cook do get to my nerves, perhaps. Not because (as she actually claims) I feel the kitchen as proprietary space, not at all. Not because (being me the feminist male that supports the career of his emancipated wife) it's me the one that always cook. I also love it when she cooks. What I don't love is the before, and the after. I guess that’s the price of being the pampered stay-at-home spouse.

As a matter of fact I can see her cooking crisis coming.

It all starts with some slight discontent. Discontent that we all might have, actually. In my case it is that I would like to have more time for my old equations, or for the occasional client that still asks for my statistics. In the case of my wife is to recognize that her career as a successful bureaucrat leaves her no time to sharpen her cooking. I can actually spot the moment, when she looks at one or another concoction from my oven and I can see a nostalgic tingle in her eyes before she compliments it. Of course I know that she is thinking "I could have done this, if I only would have the time".

The next stage comes a Wednesday, her free day. Normally she will be solving geocaching puzzles, or playing some extra piano. But not these wednesdays. Then she will be turning the pages of her old collection of receipts. Not my books, of course not. Hers, the ones full of dust. Next she will be off for the open market, for the asian food shop, for the super market. And she will be back exhausted already, with bike bags full of things. The smile will still be there, though, so I am not nervous, not yet. I'll get there after her next couple of hours in the kitchen. I even might get exhausted myself. From a safe distance I heard the clings and the clangs from my daily tools, I heard the huffing and puffing and cursing under the lips, and I try to hide my own ones. I know that the kitchen will be totally transformed after, and I will still have to use it. But what’s the heck, it's my wife cooking,no? What can be wrong about it?

Eventually we three sit, and we eat. Most of the times, even more frequently than with my cooking, what we eat is very good. Chantal does not depend much on her memory, but on her heavily annotated receipts, so whatever she does, does come out nicely. And that should be it. The next day all should be back to normal, her cooking devil resting in peace until the next attack. Only that not all is normal, no. The next day I will be the one cleaning kitchen tools that I never use, some that I actually dislike. I will be the one searching for the parafernalia that I do use daily, which mysteriously have gone hidden into the most remote corners of the shelves. I will be the one storing all the non used ingredients, the extra food that we did not eat, the sauces and the side dishes. Because one thing is sure: Chantal remembers how to cook, but she does not realize that if you cook once in a blue moon, you should cook less. Because you are not cooking for a bunch of students anymore, because you will not use tomorrow the ingredients that you didn't today. Neither your husband will, because he cooks differently. I guess that what's coming to me is rather obvious.

One day I open it, and my fridge has turned into a science project.

I would like so much not to complain about it. I would like so much to manly struggle with my feminism, and to repeat to myself (and actually believe) that this is but a small cost for the whole package. I actually feel guilty, as guilty as I suppose my mother felt when she started asking from the rest of the family some help to maintain the kitchen decent. My mother knew that in a feminist world the kitchen was not more her domain that the domain of the rest of the family. I also know that. We all know that household tasks should be collaborative. And still I would like so much that my beloved wife would stay out, or in it. It would be simpler, wouldn't it?

In this world of emancipated wife and feminist husbands, of diffuse roles, we are still figuring it out. I guess I can't just call my mother and ask her. Could I?

It wasn’t me, pal

Fri, 2 Dec 2011 10:56:48 +0100

Of course, it is not all about being frustrated. It is also about being tired. Frustration is about expectations, it's about not getting what you want. And you could certainly get tired of being simply frustrated. But this anger, this almost-muted, low-frequency beat resonating in your bones, in your stomach, is not about being frustrated. It is about being tired. Tired of repetition. Tired of the same old argument recycled and recycled. Tired of being inside a tireless tumbling drum, meeting the same persons and their ideas again and again.

Take the one about trust and small towns. Take that one argument, the preferred argument in north european countries, with their many small towns. It goes like this: society, once upon a time, was small and tightly knit. People knew each other, they trusted each other. Things like credit would occur smoothly, because we were all from the same town, the same people. And now? Now we aren't. Now we have got you, the migrant. The weird other that disrupts the social fabric, the people with another culture, that can't be trusted because are unknown, or because, actually, don't want to be trusted. How could they if they hang to their traditions, their language? They came here, didn't them? And still they don't want to assimilate, they stick to their own thing... How could we possibly trust them? . How could you possible have trust and peace in a small town disrupted by migrants? You can't, can you?

And it is at this moment when your occasional tormentor turns toward you his self-satisfied face, with a -mostly- condescending smile. It is at moments like this when you can almost hear the beat of that deep anger. How can he be so unbelievable ignorant... And on top of that, self satisfied? He actually believe that has a point.

But he doesn't.

It wasn't me, pal. It wasn't me, is actually all what you need to say. Much before I decided to come here you already abandoned your little town. And -have I got news for you- nobody want back there. Not a single person want to go back to those small things, to the controlled life of the small town. Not even you! And surely not me. Why do you think that I migrated? To escape the provincialism of my old town, to free myself, to be myself, to be whatever I wanna be! And hey, what do I find here? What do I find when I finally walk in this new world? A bunch of people mourning for their precious lost past, a past that they actually don't want to go back to, a past that they themselves abandoned... A bunch of people turning their grief to me! blaming me for their lost. Blaming my doubts, blaming my clumsiness with this bloody language, blaming my struggling to come to terms with whatever I am, with whatever I want to be.

But it wasn't me, pal. It really wasn't. It was you, you who are as lost as I am, probably as piss off as I am. You who don't get it anymore. Well, look here: I don't get it neither. And if you are angry, so am I. It's not only me that hear that beat, that tiring beating in my bones. You hear it too. Don't repeat the same old song to me, pal. It just tires me. It tires me and it makes me angry. You can't take that much, and guess what, neither can I.

It wasn't me.

Fear of deep (participation)

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:34:53 +0100

Have you ever talk with a member of the board of directors of a volunteer organization? Take a sports club as example. Now, ask to the director what is his most important priority. In nine out of ten cases you will hear that he, or she, wants to increase the participation of the members of the club. You will hear things like "it is a pity that few people really want to be active" or "the club is run by a few because the rest do not really care".

What idiots they are.

Take the same director, and propose him a simple exercise. Ask him for the last task that he is working out for the club. It could be to write the report of the last meeting of one or another commission, it might be organize an outing, a workshop. Ask him to crowd-source the task to the rest of the participants. Can you guess what will you get? My own guess is that you have three possible answers:

Whaaaaaat?
Of course, most board directors today have little understanding of terms coined few years ago. The time in which they strive to learn new things is long gone. So to most people you will have to explain wikis, collaboration via internet, the use of the cloud, and such basic things. And when they will eventually get what you mean, you are still not there, because they haven't yet. They will have get that you want to do "something with internet". And then you will have to expend the rest of your time explaining that no, copyright is not a problem; that no, that it is not illegal; that no, that unknown people is not going to sabotage your own work; that no, the government is not going to make you liable of nothing if you do your work online... and a long list of preconceptions flowing around.

"They" can't possibly do this
You might get through the process to explain crowd-sourcing to some director of the board. Or you might be lucky, and the director might already know what you are talking about. Then comes the second line of defense. The paternalism in its original and most pure state. "Are you really suggesting that the members of my club will do THIS? The thing that I do? Of course they do not know how!". It seems to belong to the nature of a director the full conviction of his absolute irreplaceability. And, associated to it, the conviction that the poor ignorant members of his club will not make it without him. Apres moi, le deluge, these nouveau-Pompadourians would say.

"They" are not allowed to do this
Imagine that you manage to scrounge through the two first trenches. You have explained that crowdsourcing is nothing else than sharing the load, and you have argued that the knowledge of a collective might be surprising. You are there! Are you? No, you aren't. You aren't because the last trench is still untouched. The best one, actually. The one that hits you in the face when the director tells you: but it is not legal, my friend. The amendment three hundred forty five made to article six thousand five hundred thirty three from our statutes some couple of hundred years ago made that impossible. It's a pity, no?

And there you will be, facing your director, your director complaining of the current times, when clubs are not what they used to be, when people is all individualistic and do not want to collaborate anymore. And you will realize that he has decided to surround his fat ass with all sort of trenches, you will realize that he actually do not want anybody doing what he does because, after all, he is afraid.

Afraid to loose the little power that he's got.

And that looks like plunging into a deep pool of cold water, into an unsafe universe where everybody might know as much as him, where he is not received anymore as a "member of the board" in every meeting, but just like anybody else. That scary situation when hierarchies are really gone for good, and people, actually, has real spaces for participation.

Scary plunge.

Dive in politics or the politics of diving

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 10:16:30 +0100

It was late in the evening. As usual, I was taking part in a board meeting. Business as usual, you would say. Unusual was that this board was not political. In the last twenty years, pretty much any other meeting that I took part of was political. Not any longer, though. Having become more cynical than ever, I took a break from politics. And I went diving.

What I did not expect is that a year later I would be back in politics. The politics of diving. And here I am again. In a board of directors of my diving club, hearing pretty much the same sort of discussions that I heard in my venezuelan neighbors association in the eighties, in my university political movement in the nineties, in my dutch green party the last decade. How to motivate people to act, and how to control the people that acts. How to balance the wills and wishes of diverse groups. How to move on in times of crisis.

Business as usual, then. Up to the moment in which one of my fellow board member said it: "we are not politicians, no way!". And again, I have to think in that profound abyss, in the unbelievable gap between people that, after all, do pretty much the same. That actually depend on each other to live.

Hearing my fellow boarder disparaging politicians, I had to remember a conversation with another diver. In one of the long drives that we do between houses and dive places, we talk about everything, of course. Being close to one or another election, I asked my friend about his voting, and I was sadly not surprised by his being uninterested in voting. When I asked why was when I got surprised: "because I don't like them". Them? "Yes, them. Those that take decisions about my life, that have real power over me... and have never met me, do not and will not know me, and still... still decide what rules I have to play by. All of them are the same: they don't know me, and they don't care. Why would I care about them?"

Back to my divers' board meeting. We are not politicians, said my fellow board member. I asked what did he mean. I could see that he was quite angry. In the board we are in crisis, due to a rebellious core of active members. Tired of what they think is the incompetence of our chairman, the rioters threaten to resign. "It's you or us" they informed the chairman. Describing the rebellious group, my fellow boarder accused them of betrayal. Well, not quite of betrayal, but of being "politicians". Nasty. Looking around the faces of the board, I saw that the insult was quite clear. You might be many things, you might be right, you might be wrong... But politician? That you should not be.

The funny thing, I would say, is that a director board is nothing else than a group of politicians. Any big human group needs a few that represent the many and take decisions (or at least propose the decisions to be taken). What else could politics be?

Actually the question is: how big was the screw that politicians made? How can it be that if you decide to work for others today, you are meet with skepticism, even with anger?

Some of you, readers of my columns coming from the green party, will think that the main challenge of our years is global warming, or the unbelievable extinction of bio-diversity that we have witness. Some others of my readers might consider that the huge increase in human diversity that our years of globalization have seen is the real issue here. Migration and migrants, that's the real challenge. Me myself, I have been gravitating between these two and the capacity of innovate, of create alternatives at whatever-might-the-next-challenge-be.

But perhaps we are all wrong. Is not global warming, is not the migrant, is not the disappearing plant or animal. It is not even our capacity of coming up with new answers. It is us. It is our profound distrust of ourselves, our distrust for the ones that decide to do something, to claim responsibility, to step up and take position. Because politics, whether of diving or of electors, is nothing else than taking up position. How comes that we have come to hate that?

How comes that we despise the ones that lead us?

Hoe slecht kan een partijraadsvergadering zijn? Over diversiteit in de partijraad van groenlinks

Sat, 8 Oct 2011 17:55:47 +0200

Inti Suarez en Suzanne van Rossenberg, partijraadsleden namens de diversiteitswerkgroepen trekken naar aanleiding van de discussie over diversiteit op 18 juni jl. de conclusie dat dit precies NIET de manier was om het thema diversiteit binnen de partijraad (PR) te bespreken.

De vier belangrijkste verbeterpunten zijn:

• Discussies binnen de PR kunnen winnen in diepte, belang en wezenlijkheid.
•Het partijraadbestuur (PRB) moet de inhoud en vorm van discussies in handen leggen van experts binnen de partijraad of derden.
• Discussies binnen de partijraad kunnen wél grondiger en professioneler worden aangepakt in plaats van geïmproviseerd en onder tijdsdruk.
• Het censureren van artikelen is onacceptabel binnen GroenLinks, zeker als het het onderwerp diversiteit betreft en het insluiten van verschillend perspectief.

Waar bestaat een discussie over diversiteit binnen GroenLinks uit?

Omdat GroenLinks diversiteit en emancipatie hoog in het vaandel heeft, is discussie erover onderdeel van gezamenlijke visievorming en organisatieontwikkeling. Een inhoudelijke discussie zou moeten gaan over de volgende drie vragen:

• Waarom is diversiteit nodig?
• Hoeveel diversiteit is mogelijk?
• Hoe gaat GroenLinks om met diversiteit?

Het tot stand brengen van diversiteit is het overbruggen van verschillen. Een debatleider verleidt sprekers om inzicht te geven in de achtergrond van hun overwegingen. Daadwerkelijke uitwisseling van verschillende gedachten en het nader tot elkaar komen, zijn gebaat bij bewustwording van eigen posities en totstandbrenging van gelijkwaardigheid. Dit kan geïntegreerd worden in plenaire en groepsdiscussies.

Wat ging er mis?

• De methode van discussiëren was polariserend en simplistisch.
• In plaats van positionering en bewustwording kwam er een zinloze nadruk op debattechnieken.
• De samenstelling van het panel die de analyse van het debat deed, was onvoldoende divers qua achtergrond en hun relatie tot GroenLinks (professioneel cq. financieel).
• De leden van het panel waren zich onvoldoende bewust van hun eigen positie als panelleden, als GroenLinksers in de discussie en als sprekers met een witte achtergrond en netwerk.
• Het doel van het debat had niets te maken met de vragen hoe GroenLinks en wij, partijraadsleden om moeten gaan met diversiteit, en ten behoeve waarvan.
•Diversiteitswerkgroepen en -partijraadsleden zijn niet benaderd betreft de discussie over diversiteit of de planning ervan.
•De opvolgende notitie van de diversiteitspartijraadsleden die een inhoudelijk en productief kader schiep voor de discussie werd eerst verwelkomd door het PRB, maar is later ter zijde geschoven.
•De organisatie van de discussie werd door gebrekkige communicatie door en expertisetekort bij het PRB een haastklus.
•Zonder opgaaf van reden kregen vlak voor de bijeenkomst ook het partijbestuur, personeelszaken van het landelijk bureau en het wetenschappelijk bureau een stem in de inhoud en uitvoering van de discussie.

•Een kort artikel dat een van de diversiteitspartijraadsleden op verzoek van het landelijk bureau heeft geschreven over de partijraadbijeenkomst is niet geplaatst in het GroenLinks magazine omdat het geen impressie was, maar een ‘mening’.

Wat nu?
•Is het door de huidige structuren binnen GroenLinks inherent onmogelijk om diversiteit onderdeel te maken van gezamenlijke en inclusieve visievorming en organisatieontwikkeling?
•Kan de partijraad een verschil maken?

De diversiteitspartijraadsleden hebben inmiddels samen met de diversiteitwerkgroepen (Kleurrijk Platform, De Linkerwang, RozeLinks, FemNet, Netwerk Chronisch Zieken en Gehandicapten, GroenLinks Plus!) een structureel, halfjaarlijks overleg geïnitieerd om diversiteit gezamenlijk te blijven agenderen. Alle werkgroepleden en andere geïnteresseerden, waaronder partijraadsleden, zijn van harte welkom.

Politics of discontent: from South America to Europe, to the East... and back to Europe

Mon, 30 May 2011 10:49:03 +0200

I guess that in any other moment the general public distrust their politicians. I seem to remember that a well known dutch politician said that democracy is organized mistrust. So in principle it seems a bit silly to talk about a political age of distrust. Was it ever different?

All the same in our years seems that distrusts and discontent mark every other political act.

If it pleases you, we might begin with the raise of right wing politics in Europe, or the rise of the left in South America. Both tidal waves have precisely the same origin, one that has little or none relation with ideology. The right in Europe and the left in South America are protest movements. Protests against an establishment incapable to offer any credible dialogue, any contact with the majority of the public. The social- and christian-democrats that ruled South America back in the eighties had a well defined neoliberal program, which basically failed to deliver all what it promised. Far worse, their leaders stop to identify themselves with their electorate. A democratic suicide that can be excellently exemplified by two candidates that counted with the support of the establishment from the first day, basked in the sun of supporting polls, and lost brutally their elections. I am talking of Mario Vargas Llosa, an intellectual liberal writer who loosed against Fujimori (an absolutely unknown candidate months before the campaign), and Irene Saenz, a former miss universe that loosed her presidential bid to Hugo Chavez an unsuccessful army commander turned brilliant politician. How could anybody possibly believe that a beauty queen could reassure and connect with the average impoverished venezuelan circa 1999? Or that a writer with a privatization agenda could offer any soulace to a country riff with terrorism and poverty? Those impoverished masses turned, not surprisingly in the south american context, to a new crop of caudillos, men that based on their personality and charisma, promised to change all by the strength of their personalities. Their left wing agenda was not the key of the success of Fujimori or Chavez, or Evo, or even Lula. Their success is based in their own personal narratives, as powerful leaders able to talk to a public largely forgotten from the discourse of the traditional politician. Leaders that in their talking did not only talked... but protested.

The neo-liberal character of the South American governments in the eighties and the nineties is not that relevant in their replacement by a radicalized left. Consider Europe. Meanwhile their South American counterparts were trying their neoliberal programs, the european governments were also run by social and christian-democrats, but with a different agenda. The continuation of the -rather left wing and anti-neo-liberal- european welfare state. If you look at the political landscape of Europe in the eighties and most of the nineties, you will see the social democrats running the majority of governments in the continent, actually. And if you look today, you will see -all around- governments lead by right wing liberals, conservatives in ideology and agenda. Again, it is not so that the political capital of these movements come from criticizing the european welfare state, that lefty paradise. Not at all. The political capital of the european right wingers today is based on the repeated protest against all the mistakes that the previous governments made, real or imaginary. Today is not possible to say that the world has become more right wing or less wing, then. What is correct to say, actually, is that the world has reacted against their traditional leaders, and is electing those who protest harder.

But are these movements a thing of the past? Or a unique Western phenomenon?

To answer that question we have to turn to the movements that we call (in yet another eurocentric analysis) the Arab Spring. Because there we are seeing the same pattern that happened first in South America, then in Europe... and now in the east. What we are seeing is a strong lack of ideologies of coherent politics. We are seeing simply a shout, a venting of a profound discontent accumulated by decades of frustration. Just like the masses that went to support the militarist Chavez, just like the masses that vote for the flamboyant Wilders. None of these groups have a well defined ideology. What they have is a saturated reality, populated with politicians far away in the clouds of government. A reality that offers no future perspective, but a forthcoming landscape of bad paid labor. No wonder that protest reigns the political expression of our time.

And to make the whole picture better and better, or perhaps more cynic, in our times of european aversion for the Islam, we have got the growing 15M movement. A movement, spanish from origin, which claims to have been inspired in the arabic one. A movement that has occupied major public spaces in Spain with open assemblies and digital counterparts. A movement that seems to keep expanding its reach to whole Spain, now to France. Would it reach and embrace the rest of Europe? It might, actually. It very well might, since their members have a clear and well defined goal.

They are protesting.

Fit to vote, in Budapest

Sat, 2 Apr 2011 11:39:36 +0200

Yet another morning, and sitting in the plenary conference room of the 14 Council Meeting of the European Green Party, I am seeing how the voting on the document "Fit for the Future" goes. The fogs of the early morning are actually gone, and through the windows the light of the sun, reflected I the Danube, flows in. So, as one of the chairpersons said; we are fit for voting.

Which as usual, is a statement to be taken with a grain of salt. Since, just as yesterday and in previous sessions along the past year, we are already ten minutes in a discussion to choose between the words agenda, or program, or platform... To describe what the european green party is doing to "live up to our goals". A rather silly discussion if you ask me. Or if you ask me before I started this business of being involved in writing manifestos for political parties. The thing is that even in this wording discussion, the issue that comes to the front is the relation of national power facing european power, say it otherwise: Should a european (green) party dare to define a political program (that might be somehow forced upon national parties) or should the europeans limit themselves to draw an agenda of shared issues? Perhaps this is why european politics sounds very boring to the outer world, and actually is exciting. The form of the discussion is formalistic and seems to be only about words. But actually, what we are really discussing, is the distribution of political power in a complex reality. The word "agenda" carried the day, by the way.

And with these, and some other comparable discussions and voting, this session came to the one and only issue that have long term consequences. The European Green Party granted, few years ago, the status of observer to an organization called European Network of Seniors. Organization which aims to integrate members defined by their age, in opposition to their nationalities. Today this organization is arguing for having voting rights, to become in facto comparable to national parties. Which will imply that the structure of a party made of national parties would be, somehow, undermined. The European Green Party would not be a simple collection of national parties, but something else... whatever else might be. And I say would. Because just right now, as I write, the voting went 75 to 3, deciding that the Seniors would not be granted special voting rights. We Greens, at least in Budapest, remain safely in our comfort zone of being an organization made out of national parties..

And in these note of consensus and comfort, the rest of the morning went on, opening the space for the next sessions, now on concrete issues. One can always hope that this -very political- using meeting time to agree on structures will not happen anytime soon.

The European Greens at Budapest, and Fukushima

Fri, 1 Apr 2011 12:34:50 +0200

Friday, and meeting new and old faces, friends and acquaintances from the European Green Party. After a flight and some orienteering, I arrived to the Council of the EGP, this spring in Budapest. My own morning started with a international breakfast at the side of the Danube. Which is kind of strange, since what we today call international breakfast is something developed here, the pastries to begin with, and even the coffee, which might have come to us from Arabs trading along the Danube in the middle ages. Still, today this way of breaking the fast of the night with pastries and coffee is more international than hungarian, which, I believe, is the destiny of pretty much every local creation. To migrate and to come back, to oscillate between identities that are fussy, at least.

And perhaps this sort of migration is what has happened with the nuclear energy discussion, if we come to think about it. Because the world was awaken to the nightmare of nuclear power in Japan, and today, in a moment when we greens where seeing a second wave, a renaissance of nuclear power, it comes to Japan again the dubious honor of remind us what are we facing. So Rebecca Harms opened this session of the Council of the Green European Party with the words: "It never felt so bad to be right"

Ada Amon, director of the NGO Energia Klub followed up this statement, sketching briefly the history of errors and mistakes that the nuclear industry has been making in Hungary. In her words: our history and Fukushima must change the nuclear discussion: it is not about economics, it is about security. That view, expressed in some detail, was followed by a talk from Peter Olajos, Hungarian State Secretary for Green Energy and Climate Change. He reminded us that Hungary heavily depends on foreign energy, mostly coming from Russia, so there is a broad societal support for the development of own nuclear energy programs. So he thinks that the discussion in the coming years will be healthily influenced by Fukushima. The hungarian government intends to create 20000 jobs for 2020, and Fukushima will somehow support this development. Following came Benedek Javor, speaker of the local hungarian greens for sustainable development. The reasons for the LMP party, hungarian greens, to be against nuclear energy is not only the known green arguments, but also the fact that nuclear is expensive and centralized, which is bad for a small market as the Hungarian. His is a position that does not forget the traditional line of green argumentation, but adds some economical elements to it.

What I am still missing in this line of discussions, actually, is the human and political dimension, that space where Fukushima might be changing the debate. For the speakers this is a fact of life, perhaps for being too long part of green movements (as myself, actually) but still. The question is if this tragedy would really affect the public opinion as other tragedies have done. When Chernobyl happened, the Soviet Union was crumbling, and the massive european demonstrations against nuclear warheads were not too far away in the past. You could say that there was a political atmosphere willing to embrace the anti-nuclear argument. Do we have that cauldrom of opinion today? For a political party it is important to think about the trends of rethinking (or not) the nuclear discussion. We greens are moving from our traditional arguments towards a more ecnomical view of the issue. But is this enough to connect with our potential base, our electoral base if you prefer?

Funnily enough, meanwhile I was typing the last sentences came Bas Eickhout to the word, attempting to give a overview of the european discussion. Ok, a chance for tackling the more political view. Bas offered a vision on ur green discussion, starting by explaining that the window of opportunity for the nuclear industry to being reborn is actually short, ten years at most. In the eyes of Bas, in about ten years renewable power will overrun the share of energy of nuclear power... And then nuclear will be out of the game. So for us greens, at least according to Bas, should shift the center of the debate: the governments and the lobbyists are the ones that have to explain why should we go now into nuclear. We do not have to explain anymore why are we against. Let the brunt of proof to fall in the other side, for once. That being said, Bas went on to explain that the issues that have to be addressed are two: energy efficiency and renewable infrastructure.

Meanwhile I still wondered if this line of argument is going to lead us somewhere else than where we are, Monica Frassoni made her points, also on the political side of the discussion. As it is known, referenda against nuclear power have been proposed in several countries. Monica does not know if national referenda against nuclear are actually better than a european one (as some greens will formally propose later today in this conference), but still: for Frassoni it is the task of the greens to add a european dimension to this debate. Nuclear energy is not about the fate of a country, but about the fate of the continent.

The panel having spoken, the word was given to the public. The first was a representative of the Austrian Greens, whom placed the debate in the broad light of ethical debate: nuclear energy is not only about economics and security. It is also about ethics. And again, about costs. Lambert (MEP) predicted the increase of costs for nuclear, because security regulation must (and will) increase. Kramer (also MEP) pointed out that Germany has increased the share of renewables faster than predicted. This is our model to follow.

And in this way the first debate of today came to an end. As a matter of fact, I have mixed feelings. Tragedies have a way to infiltrate the public mind that is, at least to my mind, hard to predict. We greens have build our political capital on our opposition too nuclear power, and the current Fukushima disaster, still going on, will certainly define our arguments. But will it be enough? Short window of opportunity or not, the nuclear lobby has gained, in the last years, the support of prominent greens, as Monbiot in England, and Lovelock in the USA. These people is not going to change their mind because of Fukushima. Will we be able to win this debate? If we are to believe the speakers today, we will. I myself think that we will indeed. But how, is still a question unanswered.

On twitter, overflow of information and birthdays

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 10:07:56 +0200

A good and old friend of mine decided to cook for my birthday. Not an old friend, I must say (she becomes 42 like me in a couple of months, and the issue is sensitive), but a friend from old, from my time of being a biology student in Venezuela in the late eighties. As any other of us, she uses quite some of the social media available to contact family and friends abroad and back home. Facebook and Skype are daily used, to keep up with a cloud of people. And still, she was in between offended and shocked when I decided to tweet between courses of her (fantastic) meal. Even more when my mobile begun to vibrate each time somebody would comment (appreciative and envious) on the previous post. Were her, her husband, her daughter and my son (at the table) not enough for me? Did I need to "share" with the "world"? (her quotation marks). I didn't stop tweeting, and eventually we settled in exploring her discontent. It turned out, like in many other similar conversations, that my friend was (and is) repelled by the idea of an ongoing line of live commenting on what we are doing, what we are feeling. Disrupting at best, arrogant and nihilistic at worse. For sure overwhelming.

A few weeks ago I attended a meeting of the ICT workgroup of my party, the dutch greens. Obviously, in between the routine tasks and issues that we have to deal with, twitter was mentioned and commented. One of us, explaining twitter to the rest, said that of course, follow more than thirty persons is nonsense, since it is impossible to really read and answer such amount of information. The debate went on for a while, and at least for the purpose of the workgroup, we settle in the idea of using social media to try and tap the constant flow of information... At least for the limited purposes of our politics. Perhaps we can improve the perception that our politicians have of their electorate and their city.

What shocks me, and actually interest me from these two examples, instances of the same issue, is the believe that we humans have a well defined capacity of processing information, capacity that ob-vious-ly has been reached (at least in the eyes of the twitter bashers). As a matter of fact, yesterday I caught myself at the same feeling. Having 500+ connections in facebook, and sunday being my birthday, my inbox monday was overflowed with notifications of people wishing me well. The first reaction, of course, is like "I can't answer them all!" "help!!". Which is a silly reaction indeed. To begin with, not all of them really want an answer. The intention is more to send a passing greet, just like the smile to some known face crossing in the street. That greeting, simple and non-pretentious, is also great. Not all our human interactions are intense and long winded. On the contrary: exchanging greetings, superficial greetings, in the street with neighbors that we barely know is a nice thing. And what is the problem with scanning the news? Do we all read all the articles of the newspapers that we are subscribed to? Or do we rather fast-read headlines and stop to check on the most promising ones?

Many of us talk today about an information revolution. And it is true that social media, internet powered, have placed to our immediate reach an unbelievable amount of information. But are we justified when feeling overwhelmed? Just take a look around you, stroll in any street of any city today. The information available for you is simply too much. Faces, cars, shops, adds... We are all showered with information, long before internet made its appearance. Libraries are inventions several millennia old. Has any person ever read all books of a library in a short while? Of course not. We humans are, almost by definition, filters of information. Our survival and welfare has always been determined by our capacity of filtering. Do you want to go to the extreme? Take a walk through a forest, as any of your hominid ancestors made few million years ago. Are you today capable to absorb all the information available? No, you aren't. And that is just fine. You will not be aware of each species of plant or animal available to your eyes. But you would certainly be aware if a wolf, or a bush with ripe blackberries, come close by.

So, coming back at our information forest of today, twitter and company. Is it really that bad? Is it really that new? I don't think so. I really don't, so for a fitting way to close these lines: What are you doing reading this oh soooo web 1.0 blog? Go and follow some more people in twitter!