Opinion articles

I write this title and the lines that follow with pain, shame and also with doubts about the relevance of what I am going to say despite the fact that what we do, whether it is positive or not, defines us culturally. In the negative space, there are so many manifestations of our reality that they hurt us because of their baseness and because of their widespread social acceptance. These expressions are contrary to any concept of adequate coexistence, to the legal regulations that do not apply and are rendered helpless in a scenario of moral degradation, either due to laxity, fear or accommodation to the decline of those who are responsible for doing so. The law has become a discursive reference and nothing more, because no one goes to it to foresee or punish individual and collective behaviors that flagrantly and daily contradict it.

We are ashamed of the lawlessness, the violence, the dirt and the defiant and criminal spirit that manifests itself immodest and unpunished in all social spaces ... when we drive, we celebrate national or local holidays, on the street, in politics and in all spheres of our flawed and decadent society. But as I said at the beginning, I am also invaded by doubts about the relevance or not of this approach that would portray us in the shame and shame of recognizing ourselves as members of an environment that surrounds us with its generalized treachery.

When it comes to exposing the complexity of the human condition, the approach that comes from the spaces of literature and art is always profound because it addresses essences that are better apprehensible from the broad description of narrative, poetry, and plastic. , theater, dance or music. We are moved by literary works, paintings, sculptures, plays or musical compositions that reach the most intimate of our sensibility because they connect with it directly, without the need for the intellectual and theoretical requirements that can come from the social sciences. Thus, from this approach, the Guernica Picasso tells us more and more directly than what has been written about that massacre. Or Daumier's paintings on lawyers and justice, represent with unique drama the decline of civil servants in jurisdictional systems. Or the Requiem Verdi's connects us with the magnificence of faith, more forcefully than a theological text.

The same happens with the subject of the mental condition of those who are confined in prisons. Many research works deal with the question making important contributions to understand this reality, however, the literary approach to the genius of Dostoevsky in his novel The grave of the living It is irreplaceable, since it describes essences that do not require, to be apprehended, fulfill academic requirements such as the mandatory formats for publishing, since the approach of the writers is based on freedom and the discretionary use of language to narrate life situations.

Post-pandemic? I thought of each of these words as a possible title for this note. I chose the one that is written because I think and feel that we are still in it despite global and local attempts to go out and retake distant and lost forms of life, remembered by a sensitivity that superficially evokes them, because we hardly have time for other types of an approach that would require introspection processes only possible in settings of tranquility and isolation, essential for grief and reflection.

We motivate each other to move forward, to continue, to be resilient in the face of anguish and pain for our dead, for others, for everyone, and also to be resilient in the face of the series of misfortunes that the The pandemic brought… economic, psychological, emotional, from which we want to get away to continue at any cost, even with broken hearts and broken lives. This generalized position makes sense and demands from us a strength and a mettle that should lead us not to repeat our mistakes, but to something new that allows us to live differently, more slowly, in a less ambitious way for material achievements and more demanding in the search. of spiritual transcendences that are always connected with the practice of behaviors such as simplicity, solidarity and respect for the life of everyone and everything.

Words, words and more words on the one hand and on the other accomplished facts, contrary to what they say, because they are used venally as a staged, false and hypocritical scenario, revealing a practice of politics in the worst of its senses, to position a discourse that is also fallacious, which keeps the forms when it refers to certain categories and common objectives ... "we want stability, we are interested in the good of the country, we reject violence, we are democrats" and others of that tenor, debased by those who pronounce them without engage with them because when they speak they know that they are a parapet for their own ends - those that are not expressed - which are essentially to achieve their own objectives, whether economic or profit.

Despite the analysis that the entire society performs in the majority and on a daily basis in all areas on the political situation of the country, those of us who are citizens who deal with other aspects of daily reality, on this occasion also and already personally join those voices, despite the fact that I always seek as an individual to breathe positive airs that come from other areas. The institutional deterioration and the risk of chaotic scenarios is overwhelming and involves us all demanding that we take a position as Ecuadorian citizens.

It is the fifth largest country in the world and the largest in South America. It occupies almost fifty percent of its territory and borders all the others in the region with the exception of Ecuador and Chile. It has a population of almost two hundred and twenty million inhabitants, which is equal to the sum of that of all the other countries of the subcontinent. It is the strongest economy in South America with important indicators in the production of coffee, sugar cane and soybeans, extraction of iron, aluminum, coal, and oil. It exports wood, cattle and beef. Its industry is important in textiles, aeronautics, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, iron and steel and chemicals, and it is also important in the provision of telecommunications and tourism services.

Its higher education system is the strongest in the region. In the Latin American ranking of the Times Higher Education 2021, of the ten universities highlighted as the best, seven are Brazilian.

This statement could seem paranoid, exaggerated or at best out of date because it is connected to references coming from fertile and even feverish imaginations related to pure science fiction. But is not. On the contrary, the validity of this thesis can be defended because the real elements to do so are abundant.

The Internet is the most obvious example, since it allows - as a first reference - to look at the indissoluble connection of human endeavor with its creation. A large number of individual and social activities are carried out on the computer network and many cannot be done if it is not through it. Without the internet, contemporary cultural forms simply could not exist, nor would they be. Also social networks, technological forms of communication, become for many and perhaps for all, almost indispensable mechanisms of relationship.