Hello Peace - Shalom Salaam

For a few days I have been inspired to write this post. However, the mess around me demanded my attention and stole my time (my partner and I have recently moved apartment). Nevertheless, it has given me a lot of time to reflect and I am now certain of the thoughts I want to utter, albeit at this moment they remain abstract creatures in my mind.

Before I proceed I must admit that I have an emotional reason to favor one side over the other, but in line with my education, both with regards to how I was raised and what I have learned throughout my academic  career, I recognize that there are always at least two sides to a conflict. Pointing fingers at each other is therefore useless and it is not going to solve anything.

I studied the Arab-Israeli Conflict for 3 years and while it is often described as being one of the most complex conflicts of our time, it’s actually not. What makes it a hard nut to crack is the emotional aspect of it and the fact that both Jews and Muslims walk backwards towards the future and never lose sight of the past. They never forget. It's a cultural thing. Christians, on the other hand, face the future.

The Palestinians want recognition, for their suffering and as a nation. They want compensation. They want a state. This is all very legitimate and I see no reason for why the Palestinian people should be denied the right to self-determination.

Though, with Hamas it's a different story and they lose a lot of legitimacy, not only in the eyes of the Israelis, but also in the eyes of big parts of the world that recognize Hamas as a terror organization (i.e. the EU and the US).  Hamas wants an Islamic-Palestinian state in Israel. They don’t believe in a two-state solution. They want to kill the Jews. I’m not making propaganda here, but merely listing some of the main points from the Charter of Hamas.

Since 1967 Israel has often being portrayed as being Goliath in a disproportionate battle against the Palestinians. Hamas calls the Israelis  “Merchants of War” (also from the Charter). And it is true that the Israeli military is among the most advanced armies in the world and so is its technology. Yet, despite the message that such a strong military may convey I can honestly say (I’m half Israeli, born in Israel and I have lived in Israel for 6 years) that the majority of the Israelis wants peace.

The other day my fb-friend, Natalie Golan, wrote why she is so certain of this argument. She framed it with education. According to an OECD report made this year, Israel is the 2ndmost educated country in the world (Canada is number 1) in terms of 25-64 year-olds that have a higher education, and it has the highest PhD per capita. These Israelis do not want to close down schools indefinitely and jeopardize the future of their children. What they really want is peace.

If you were a little bit skeptical from the beginning now you probably wonder why the Palestinians shouldn't also have the right to education and you probably think that this right has been taken from them by the Israelis. Yet, it isn’t so. While Israel provides humanitarian aid to Gaza, Hamas preaches destruction over the Jews. While the Israeli children go to school with dreams of becoming firemen, astronauts and journalists, the Palestinian children are denied these dreams. Instead Hamas’ agenda is being imposed on them.

I must disappoint all the people that thought this post would be concluded with a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. I don’t think that peace can be achieved, at least not right now. Not as long as the government of Gaza wants to see the destruction of Israel and all the Jews residing therein. And not as long as the children are taught to hate. In the past couple of days I have seen a quote from the former Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, posted on fb more than once. She said that “peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us [the Israelis]”. I have always believed that this quote should be applied to both parties, but having lived in Israel recently I can now say that hate is not on the curriculum of public schools in Israel. So this quote, word for word, has gained validity over the years.

Yes, what is going on in this area, not only now that it is in the news but every day, is really sad. I recommend not supporting a side because it seems to be the weaker one, but to think about the main objective here: Peace. I can think of a few ways to achieve this objective and none of them involve condemning Israel.

I love this song - "od yavo shalom aleinu" means "peace will come to us". In the end there will be peace.

Shalom, Salaam!

                                                                                                                                                                                   

Mother Earth May I... Stay?

A few months ago I watched a documentary that impressed me a great deal. It was about the much discussed topic, Climate Change. Based on interviews with different scientists within different disciplines it gave a good insight to the current problems of climate change and its impact on the future and well-being of human beings.

What impacted me the most was a phrase that kept standing out in my mind every time I thought about the topic. It has stayed with me and I want to share it with you. The phrase was uttered by Chief Oren Lyons, one of the leading advocates of Indian American causes and a great promoter of indigenous rights. He said that when the limit has been reached and the earth can no longer bear the large pressure we, the humans, put on it, the earth will eventually regenerate itself. And it will be peaceful again. So maybe there will be no people on earth, but the earth will regenerate. His answer to why this is so was simply: “because the earth has all the time in the world. And we don’t!”

So the argument is that while all life may not be extinguished, we, the humans, as a species at the top of the food chain, are the most vulnerable. Life has existed on earth for 3.8-4 billion years. Yet, 99.9999 % of all species that have ever existed have been extinct. Thus, there is reason to argue that extinction is a natural part of life.

Though, and I'm still referring to the documentary, the tragedy is that in our fall we are taking many other species down with us.

We are causing an extinction crisis!!

In my master's thesis I looked at the situation of unsustainability that exists in mainstream society nowadays and I saw that biodiversity is decreasing radically. What we don’t realize is that, while we focus on growth and marketeconomic values, such as profit maximization, consumption and competition we are actually committing suicide. We are destroying the planet on which we depend in a speed that, if you look at it closely, is terrifying.

We need to break out of this consumer democracy where it’s all about satisfying the greed of the people. Rather we ought to focus more on environmental protection and ecological sustainability.

The problem is that this is not possible unless we undergo a complete cultural transformation.

We need to start focus on what we really need instead of what we want (or what the corporations want us to want). This is really difficult. I know. But here are a few steps that you can take:

1. Awareness: be aware of what’s going on around you. Watch documentaries and read books and articles on the topic.
2. Buy local: Support local small-scale corporations, especially when you buy food. You will discover that the food tastes better (normally it has undergone less chemical treatment and it is fresher).
3. Sustainable thinking: Keep thinking about what you really need. Think about what you could live without. In my thesis I found that in most indigenous societies the level of sustainability is substantially higher than in mainstream society, because the values are different – for example they have a profound respect for the environment on which they depend and don’t just focus on how much profit you can gain from it.

This is not a problem that economic development can solve, because even though technology may be one of the means to deal with environmental problems in the long run, the whole thing starts with a societal change of mind, a cultural transformation. Many scholars argue that it's already late or that we are running out of time and every one with a little bit of historical understanding knows that a cultural transformation does not happen over night. Yet, the process needs to begin. And, as I'm an optimist, I believe that we can change. Let's fight for the the planet to become green again and for our survival.

Here are some links for ways to get informed:
The Documentary - The 11th Hour:

The 3rd and most recent report in the series The Limits to Growth, commissioned by the Club of Rome and started back in 1972 (really really good):
The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update

If You Play Alone You Stay Alone

In this post I will, as I promised, explain my theory with regards to the efficiency and initiative-taking abilities of the Chinese people. As mentioned in the previous post about patience, Chinese employees can sometimes be extraordinarily slow and while they may do an excellent job if you tell/show them exactly what to do, they lack a lot of initiative and independence when they need to complete tasks that require some degree of personal input.

I don't want to sound judgmental and overly critical and it took me quite a while to reach this conclusion. Yet, I wanted to understand why so many people were referring to the Chinese as bad workers (most people that I know that have worked with them call them inefficient and complain about the fact that they have to watch their every move.) I also knew many expats in Beijing that told me that it would take 5-6 Chinese people to do the work they could do alone and in half the time. 

I wanted to get to the bottom of this, so I decided to observe the people and ask around. These three observations and facts led to the conclusion that many Chinese people lack skills related to initiative-taking, especially in their working environment:

1. Because of the one-child policy Chinese children don't have siblings and thus they are not used to the interaction with other kids from an early stage, including the conflicts that occur and the games that you create.
2. As a consequence of the one-child policy it is not only a case of the parents but also the grandparents only have one grandchild. Therefore, all the hopes and dreams are placed on this one child and if it is possible the children are being put in the best (and most expensive) schools with reputations of academic excellency.
3. Because of point number 2, the children are being pressured early on to achieve excellent academic results and being the best at other things, such as playing the piano or playing badminton. I noticed that the Chinese children barely play. You often see them together with their parents or grandparents walking to or from school and occasionally playing badminton in the hallway or you get the joy of listening to them practicing on the piano. If you see them in groups they don't really play, but sometimes they run or they yell. You barely see them playing structured games, such as for example Hide & Seek and you very rarely here a child say "I made up this game, do you wanna play?"

At my job at the Chinese academy I met this nice girl that was studying in France who was my coworker for a short while. She came from a city close to Shanghai, but spoke fluently English. One day I asked her about how it was to be a child in China and she told me that it was a nightmare, because you have to study so much and all you wanna do is to play. So I asked her if she had played a lot as a child and she answered that she had not and when she played she played by herself at home or with her grandmother who was taking care of her when the parents were at work. This girl had severe problems with writing her weekly report, as she didn't know what to write. Although she was working in marketing and sales she was neither outgoing nor creative. She was a hard-worker, I must give her that, because she came before me in the morning and left long after me in the evening (she working perhaps 12 hours per day!). However, I couldn't imagine what she was doing and little by little more of her responsibilities were given to me and I had to pretend that I needed to spend 4-6 hours on a task when all I needed was 1 hour, because as my efficiency was that much higher than hers I didn't want to end up with all the responsibilities (this was my decision after having measured the value of my work which was paid with Chinese lessons).

So what's the conclusion of all this? Merely that our childhood has an impact on the way we work in the future. So give your children the freedom to play! Let them invent games and create their rules. Let them use old furniture and wood to build tree houses and let them build fortresses in the garden and use your old clothes to dress up. Education is important because it expands your capacity to learn. Interaction with other people is just as important. Through playing you learn to share, you learn to be creative and you get a place to put all that extra energy that you automatically have as a child. I think that the children that played a lot, both alone and in groups, come out to be the most innovative and outgoing employees and leaders.

Patience IS a Virtue (it's not just something they say)

As I promised I'm now presenting you with some controversial stories and facts about our emerging superpower and economic giant, China. My intentions are NOT to create a fuss, NOT to encourage political rallies and protests and NOT to undervalue the power of China. I merely want to share my opinion based on my experiences in the country and some amount of cultural perspective that I have accumulated over the years.

When I first arrived to China, I thought: This is good for me. Here I will learn gain some Asian values, such as harmony, peace, control and patience. What I got was nothing similar to these feelings and values. The only reason I became more patient in China was because I was forced to be quiet, forced to wait, forced to talk slowly, merely to cross the communication and cultural barriers that stand as a heavy wall between us Westerners and the Chinese.

In Beijing you can forget all about harmony and peace. Everything is one big chaos - it's a human-made jungle of health and safety hazards. If you haven't been there you only see what they want you to see, yet on the other hand I wouldn't encourage you to go just to prove this point. A little example: In Beijing there are no real peak hours for the traffic jams. You have a few hours before dawn and a few hours at night in which the traffic runs rather smoothly. Not long ago I read a fb status of one of my friends mentioning a recent conversation his wife had with a taxi driver when she put on her seat belt. She told him that she was doing it because she wanted to protect herself in case of an accident and he told her that it would be uncomfortable figuring the likelihood of being stuck in traffic for the entire ride.

When I was working in a Chinese academy, owned by two westerners, there were a bunch of Chinese teachers and I really understood that while they are lovely people they are not the easiest employees one could have. My boss, whose confidence I quickly gained due to the mere fact that I as well was a westerner, told me that not only does he have to tell them what to do a million times he has to show them everything step by step. Of course as teachers they were excellent, it was in the administration process they lacked.

It seems to me that they work miracles when they are being instructed carefully, for example when you give them a step to step guide on how to complete an excel sheet. Yet, when it comes to independent thinking, initiative-taking and creativity they are lost in the forest. They will say yes to everything, but when they have to do it, they don't. The boss was struggling a lot when he wanted them to fill out a weekly report or help with PR work. I saw the boss as a patient man and I could understand his frustration.

I have a theory that may be able to explain this trend. Read it in my next post titled:
If you play alone you stay alone.

Yet, what I can tell you right here and right now is that if you, as I did, lack the virtue of patience, Beijing really does the work for you. However, keep in mind that it will be forced on you from all around you and blow you up like a balloon that eventually will explode unless you let the air seep out slowly. What I did to prevent an explosion was to repeatedly tell myself that "China is China" or "Only in China" and comfort myself with looking at my EU passport that I, unlike 92% of the world's population, am so lucky to hold.

The "Risk-Free" Launch of My New Blog

I have been wanting to start this blog for quite a while now, but I haven't had the courage to launch it until now. I have spent half a year in Beijing, China. People that are up to date with the political reality of this economic giant know that it is risky to discuss China and even worse if the negative aspects are highlighted.

Perhaps, if I would have started this blog in China nothing would have happened. No one would have found out and I would have been safe along with my political integrity. However, my experiences told me not to risk it and so did my Chinese friends. I most certainly do not want to be invited to "drink a cup of tea" with the CCP, as a Chinese friend of my friend did after publishing rather controversial statements on the Chinese version of Twitter, Weibo.

Furthermore, my intentions are that as many people as possible read this blog. Although today's post is quite broad and descriptive the posts on The Final Paragraph will be precise and concluding. They will be cut-to-the-chase assumptions and reflections of how I see the international order.

My reflections are based on my experiences and while the conclusions are partially derived from my academic background in international relations they will all be thoroughly thought through. My insanity will bring me to places where I normally wouldn't go whereas my common sense will justify how and why I got there.

Many of my reflections will also be based on current topics in the media, both the mainstream media and also alternative media sources. For the past year or so I have begun opening my eyes to the selective nature of the mainstream sources, not so much because they take the decisions but rather because they are in the claw of the big corporations. My partner in life is occupied with this theme along with other major trends that he recently discovered to be untrue and manipulated. If you master the Spanish language you can read his blog (http://www.pensing.blogspot.com/) which in a bold and fearless way calls on you to wake up from your zombie-like condition.

Here is a list of the main topics that I will touch upon in the upcoming posts:

• China - What do they want us to know? What do they want us to think? And what's really going on?
• Iran - My reflections on the much-discussed conflict. What would be the consequences of a potential attack.
• Sustainable Development and Energy Access - If we could truly live in an environmentally sustainable world then why aren't we?
• The Freedom of the Internet 

I'm looking forward to complete The Final Paragraph with conclusions about the current state of affairs. This blog is born to be read by many, but most importantly it is born to keep track of my thoughts that often take me beyond the boundaries of my knowledge and demand ultimate concentration and reflection. Finally, I welcome comments and critique. Writing about controversial issues are bound to meet resistance. I recognize this.