English Versions I : A Grande Obra / The Masterpiece

About the background for this ( the actual essay starts further bellow, feel free to skip this )

In this page, and the following ones, i will translate some of my best essays to english for the access a broader audience. Now that is quite self-explanatory, but i also wanted you to note this : these translated versions i'm working on are more like remakes. Portuguese and english not only have different structures, but they also have different concepts that cannot be translated smoothly, without loss of meaning and aesthetic value between the original and the translation. When i write something, i obviously try to make my point clear, but i also try to make it sound/read nice, you know ? I hate rough translations that take the subtle away from the original work, so i'm not doing that to my own. I prefer to take the opportunity and make something new taking my own past work as inspiration.

Furthermore, i'd like to explain what led me into trying this. I have the firm belief that philosophy in Brazil is... pathetic. There is not other word for it. Brazilian philosophers -- i'll call them that way for the sake of communication -- merely worship and endlessy study the work of famous european philosophers, and they make no attempt to create a work of their own, to have their own ideas. Worse than that, those academic professors make damn sure that their students don't go farther either. Those, like myself, who make an attempt at something more unique and authentic are simply not understood. I understand that repetition and tradition have a place, but they don't understand that creativity also has one -- the fact that i dislike endlessy quoting and repeating after people that i am told that are important and infinitely smarter than me, the fact that i like to talk and debate about reality, and not so much about what the classics thought, that fact leads most of my colleagues and teachers to the conclusion that i am some asshole who thinks he knows everything already. I may be an asshole, but that second part is just jumping the gun at me. I like the work of others, but i also like my own.

The few souls that break free from the moralized mediocrity here end up having to run to some other country so they can work and get attention. Some of them actually made quite a name for themselves outside of Brazil -- and even still they are ignored here ! Brazilian universities are like a " plan B " for losers that are rightfully ignored in their homelands, because if you don't speak portuguese people around here think that you are smart. You know how some people tend to find a stranger's accent charming ? Imagine that taken way too far. It's like we're stuck on that time frame of the colonial period. I wish half of the american patriotism could be transferred over to us, so that the USA would stop having crusades " for democracy " and people around here would grow their fucking spines.

The thing is, i am not running away from this clusterfuck of insecure and resigned people. That is not the reason why i want to try writing in english as well. Some people here do understand it, and fewer of them are even trying ( a bit ) to change things for the better. I want to be one of those people. Besides, i think running away is stupid, because if i fail here that's also on me, not just on " the system ". Am i right? But i do need some kind of different reception. And by different i mean something other than having all my original work ignored and all my academic sellout bullshit getting praise. " Oh, so that's your research, huh? Congratulations, you're doing really well !" No, goddamn, i am not doing fucking well, i done it like this because you ignore my every thought if i don't pretend it came from these damn quotes you like so fucking much. Fuck this A grade, fuck you and fuck me as well for playing along with this crap --* Sigh * That´s college for you. Well, at least there's girls and stuff. But i'm getting sidetracked here, my point is that this is eating away at me. Maybe people from other cultures that are fucked in different ways can provide some better interaction. It's intellectually draining to deal with just this kind of nonsense, because it causes negative influence on me. Not in the sense of me learning to be like those fucks, but in the sense that i have them in my mind much too often, and some of my arguments end up being in the shape of a critique of academics. Now, i think that's also important and that i have some interesting observations on the level of desperation it takes for a guy to think reading a bunch of european books turns him into an authority in the intellectual sense -- and on how foolish this kind of authority is in general.

But look at this big, stupid rant. It's holding me back. I have more important things to discuss, namely love, beauty, ethics, freedom, the human mind, science, art, education and perhaps most of all, creativity. Maybe i'm still writting this to no one after all, but what the hell. If i don't give it a shot i'll just explode. I'm burning up here. If you've read this mess... you have my thanks.

I hope you can enjoy these. There's a lot of soul put into them.

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The Masterpiece

Creativity does not occur at random, and it is not tied strictly to individual talent either. To create something, one must understand and wish to transform. Creative work simply does not happen without knowledge in combination with the desire of transformation, something that both professionals and ammateurs often get wrong one way or the other. Compare academics and people posting opinions all over the internet, for instance. Academics have method and knowledge of their subject, but are in general much too cautious to try and say something on their own, because they treat the work of classics as references from which they, by influence, must take their conclusions and prove to the other academics that most of what they say is in response to the acclaimed ideias of others, instead of making their own spirits the ground zero for their inquiries. They learn that to be smart is to be influenced by that particular group of people that are highlighted as smart. Hence the very strong and distinct focus on quoting that makes my dear academics oh so very special. Some people say that you need decades studying hard like that to ever be a creative genius, but notice that the daily practice of it is clearly against change -- t consists in absorbing as much as you can of the tradition on the matter you are interested in so that someday you can start making your contribution, to that same tradition. Even that faint change is left to " someday ". Not only this is too conservative to ever result in creation, but you'd be dead before learning a quarter of all that is important, and most academics do die before ever getting started on the work that is truly their own.

On the other hand, people on more free places like the internet are bold, and often try to say or make something unique... but there is usually a problem in the motivation there as well. Ammateurs who want to break all the barriers and do it in their own bombastic way without caring about what us idiots think about it are often in love with the idea of change in itself, as a concept that is empty except for the notion that those who are different are interesting, and gaining that status is their goal. " Knowing and having the desire for transformation " means wanting and making something new for reasons, or because of one's innermost feelings. It means " having a vision ", if you will. The edgelords out there that are just trying to break the norm for the sake of it make their attempt at creating shock without any knowledge as a base, so their " change " has no real meaning. Also, since creativity involves wisdom, a certain moderation is seen on creative people and is not seen on most people posting stuff in the internet. That moderation is the ability to discern frivolous messages and feelings from the important ones which deserve to be made into creations. The internet -- like other free spaces for expression -- is flooded with poor attempts at breaking the norms that ultimately reaffirm those standards, and is also plagued by a torrent of meaningless, mediocre work. The overall lack of quality in the content that circulates in free discussions is a bad influence to newcomers, who tend to contribute to that same situation. With professionals, you have to prove so much before being considered worthy of attention that there is little energy left for what you actually set out to do. In free discussions, the expectations are so low and the feedback is usually so bad that as an ammateur you're led into having low standards, or into creating your own wacky standards as an excuse to avoid criticism, as a way to bear the nonsense of it all. It's a big mess, really. Some people think that creativity is somehow dead or requires, well, a life of non-creative preparation to somehow... i don't even know. And others think that the universe will just bend to their will , that they can make new things and ideas with no cost and full gain, but clearly achieve nothing but messy rehash.

Some people blame this on capitalism, because drawing attention to mediocrity makes profit. If only top-quality entertainment existed there wouldn't be an industry for it, because there wouldn't be a mass production of music, videogames, etc. But people who find security in themselves and pave their way to being creative know how to find ways to make a living with their true work. Professionals who have method without soul and people desperate to be validated by others are the ones who feed the market that eats away at us all. People can make money with good work, or they can mask themselves with propaganda and sell garbage as if it was golden. I think the choice is within each of us once we find a passion. One doesn't become creative by expertise alone, or by boldness alone. Creativity has to be cultivated, as the practical and mental habit of learning with the intent of formulating an idea of your own and and putting that idea out there in the world in the form of a creation. You can be creative as a result of studying , by observation and by reading theories, if it helps you figure out what you want to change, what you'd like to experience that hasn't been made quite the way you like it yet. If you've read hundreds of books and all you really want is to keep doing it, and talking about them, you are not paving your way to originality and your supposed lack of innate talent is just an excuse to keep your ego at ease. That should be obvious, but i'm not done. Most people start studying something heavily because they want to understand and change that something. You don't read five hundred books on social justice if you don't care about it in any way. But what happens if you spend much too long reading the work of others and proving that you did it ( you don't want an F on your essay, do you ? ) and nearly no time taking risks and learning with your own mistakes, learning how it feels to speak by yourself, to figure things out by yourself, to figure out what you want things to be like, no time trying to create what you want ? You will end giving up on creating or transforming without realizing that. All the things you read and repeat after will form a thick layer in your mind, between your brain and reality, and you will start discussing concepts about reality as if they were the very facts they ilustrate, you will start discussing the interactions between the famous authors as if they were the changes in the world. Their books will take priority over your world. If you think that is objectivity you have been lied to.

We are wasting time. In many different ways we are actually threatened as a species, because in this ancient, obsolete system of creation and education smart ideas to solve severe problems tend to reach common sense after the problem solves itself in the hard way, once the catastrophe is over and done with and mourning the fallen in guilty hindsight is all that is left to do -- for those who at least think by themselves after the shock, that is. War and all the related tragedies are a good example. There always is self-righteous propaganda sugarcoating war. War is murder, terror and pillage, just look at what the consequences always are. All the complication of it is merely the clash of the lies that each oposing force rise against each other, to create " the enemy " . This kind of propaganda and warped world view is in the vast majority of cases easy to expose for what it is, for those who think for themselves. Those who just repeat after the masses or just pick a particular view to follow get caught by it all and end up playing their part in those crimes, by spreading nonsense that justifies hate, by making the debate that could solve the conflict peacefully inviable or even by willigly taking arms.*¹ Also, making discoveries will only ger harder and harder as the centuries pass, as more of the easily noticeable aspects of the world are fully documented and we have to deal almost exclusively with things like atoms and quarks. How long are we going to depend on the occasional Einstein ? Pretending academics are not hacks when it comes to creativity won't help. We are educated to act like side characters in our own lives while sustaining a mental fantasy in which we are the main, characters the world depends on. Lack of creative action perpetuates our narcisism, as we waste away in day dreams and convenient terrors.

The internet didn't solve that because a culture of creators and free thinkers can't be created just by having the technology for it. Humanity keeps making the same mistakes because we are not evolving our ideas enough, and that is what creativity is for. Intellectuals and politicians these days won't shut up about " critical thinking " when it comes to education and public debate, but what does that really mean? From my experience, anyone who tried to teach " critical thinking " to me did so by telling me i should use their method of reasoning and their set of references as tools of discussion. " This is objective, it's how you do it ", they would tell me, when there was several valid reasons do disagree and think otherwise. And let me be very clear on this, i mean disagreeing with the method itself, not accepting the method and then disagreeing with the professor's conclusion in particular. That does happen in classes at times, and teachers tend to welcome it. I am saying, however, that just arguing over the output or the input is not enough if the machine has a poor design to begin with.*² And when you start taking pokes at the machinery and saying " look at how bad this is, why are we organized like this? ", your friendly to criticism fellows let their masks fall off, beacuse they are ultimately not brave enough to discuss their habits, what they actually do in a daily basis. Bold ideas are fine until they turn into actions with actual consequences. Make no mistake, you are expected to blend in.

People say critical thinking is about using logic and evidence to form an opinion. But does " logic " have a single meaning? And is " evidence " not dependant of your previous expectations? If you lack the drive to stand up for yourself and fulfill your potential it is too easy for someone to tell you explicitly or implicitly, deliberately or by accident, that " this is what critical thinking looks like ", and then you can say " oh, ok! i'll try my best to learn " and become another piece of cattle. Having your mind set to function in a determined way is much, much worse than being forced to pretend belief in a particular idea. Our eminent secular intellectuals love to point their finger at the dogmatism of religion , but look at what college is doing to people! And let's be honest, " i am teaching critical thinking to you, so listen " is scarier than " i represent God ", because the former can actually trick smart and educated people and even make the authority feel like a liberator. Nail me to a cross, but spare me my mind! At least the prophets out there know they are full of it. Thinking your audience that listens to you in dead silence and repeats after everything you say is being enlightened by your wonderful lecture... now that is a bad case of religion. The fact that our atheist popstars never take a moment to talk about how their workplace reeks of corruption is really telling, don't you agree? Or do you think that is just because universities are the most free places in the universe and that i'm a jackass for not thinking Sam Harris is the shit ? You're wondering if i'm a christian that is bitter because religion is getting chased out of college, or if i'm just some loser? That ad hominem approach is another really familiar phenomena to me.

Ideas create deep bonds between people, they enable progress and bring meaning to life, but no matter how powerful an idea originally is, everything but the very universe itself corrupts naturally as time passes. New times require new ideas, as they bring in new problems and discoveries. Dragging on ideas and institutions that served their role in the past but no longer do now turns us oblivious to things that a naive child could notice, and some of those ideas and, in particular, institutions turn into problems themselves as the inevitable corruption spreads and runs deep, because people fail to realize that institutions need to be reborn from time to time in order to stay useful. One generation may create a great and admirable institution, but all it takes to corrupt the dream is a few generations of successors that lack the creative drive of the original members. When the successors merely maintain the traditions, rules and ideas of an institution without having in themselves what led someone else to create those, the institution is doomed and may need to be shut down. I want to torch an university dressed as an 18th century revolutionary and drenched in alcohol. Now that i got that out let us continue. The timid rehash that we pretend to be changing something is just too little, too late. And that really makes me wonder why people tend to be so timid, why is it easier for people like most academics are to create a little world of lies where their uninspired garbage is creating something, instead of actually taking some risk for the sake of maybe gaining something more. Maybe that's where the answer is. It seems to be a " risk versus reward " problem. What is the risk that you take on when you think by yourself and express yourlself as a creator, when you put your soul on some work and claim " this is part of who i am "? You know the answer don't you.

If your work is mediocre or worse because you just followed the rules or because you just gave the masses what they want, it's ok -- it's fake anyway. " It's just my job, and i'm getting my paycheck so who cares. " There are many factors that make a person act insecure, and they can work simultaneously, but i tend to notice how coincidentally convenient and deliberately devious self-humiliation can be. It's so much easier to be bad or bland. If you're self-depreciating and willing to stay bad and obey, authorites will have you under their wings, because you make them feel necessary. Following their orders you can spread nonsense, let your fellow man waste away and die so you can buy all the videogames you want. It doesn't matter because it's coming from society, not from you, right? It's not what you'd like the world to be, it is what it is and -- now let's cut the bullshit. Society is corrupt because we are rotten on the inside. It's not our nature, but it's how we are now, how we have been for a while, because we found excuses to circle around our guilt, to relay our sins to the idea that human nature is in itself corrupt and could not possibly be better, to the idea that society is the source of our evil and the system is stronger than us so we may as well go back to facebook. We have filth in our spirits, things we need to face, to suffer through in order to become better and stronger, to match our ideals of love, freedom, etc. But society became about running away from what is negative, instead of us facing it until it improves. A teacher´s favorite student is the slime that needs constant advice, not the brilliant and independent individual that may already be above his/hers level. Rulers like the fragile civilians that learn right and wrong from the law and call the police if something goes wrong. We need to relay our inner fight to something else so it stops hurting, and authorities need to feel that they are strong and that people would fall without them.

" But what does that have to do with creativity ? " I just told you. If you create something and you know that it has your soul put into it, your ego is no longer immune. If you try to act good based on your deepest notion of justice and it fails, if you make something that you really believe is amazing but it turns out to be bad, that will show something about you that you'll dread. If you fall as a pawn in your ruler's hands you are unfortunate, but if you fall on your own path you have failed and nobody taught you how to stand back up and improve after that. If you fail you are a failure, it goes into your identity because everyone acts like it does so it has to. And there's something we need to toss away, badly. This narcissistic terror is making people prefer letting themselves go because failure screws people up so bad that finding excuses to not try feels much better. Ask anyone you consider creative, talented or successful how many failed attempts they had until the successful ones that people remember started happening. Your original work, your true passion may be bad, but it's yours, and is the pavement on your road to power, it -- and nothing and no one else -- will make you learn and improve in the deepest way. If you don't even know what your passion is, let me tell you, you have been robbed and you better find the culprit to take back what you need. " ...Or else?"

Depression. Folks killing themselves. Have you ever wondered why is it so common these days? Why depression has kind of escalated into a collective feeling that some notice more, others less? You could come in with neurochemistry but then i'd tell you to get the hell out with that, because biological explanations can be counterproductive if they help make us oblivious to the fact that our ideas ( or lack of ) can cause us more harm than whatever can be fixed with drugs. When people create amazing things, top-quality and unique things that make you think " man, only he/she could have done that ", and when they cultivate that same splendor in their personality ( after all, you can see yourself in a creative manner ) it is very inspiring for the rest of us. Creations and people that are inspired spread that like a wildfire. The world gains art and beauty, their art and beauty. Just watching them go feels good, and it feels even better when some of that energy ends up within us, leading us into making our own amazing art and becoming more powerful and unique. Inspiration and depression are opposites. Inspiration is the drive to use what you have in hands to create what you want to see, and the same goes for being who you want to be. Depression is the result of having options but no drive to make anything out of them. Freedom with no will for power, that is.

If we lived receiving orders at gunpoint, we would be in pain but not in depression. But we live in a different kind of auhoritarian society, one that tells us that we are free, but tricks us out of our way to power. A society that tells us we can be anything if we make the effort, but doesn't let us have much in practice. You are free but you are not in charge. Instead of having a firing squad ending you because you think marijuana should be legal, you have a professor giving you a F if you don't fill your essay with jargon to the point of making it inaccessible to outsiders who may actually change the law. And of course, if you're caught smoking you'll go to jail for being evil. Some societies still execute people for being unholy. Ours is telling people to give up their unusual ideas because they are not objective enough. Science already knows how things are. You're bad. Go home. Not having a religious firing squad eager to murder us is cool and all, but it would also be nice if we weren't led to feeling death on the inside, and if people tried to break free from depression instead of embracing it in the form of cynicism like complete idiots. Inspired people are inspiring, depressing people are depressing, and seems like we have a bit too many of the second type. That is my take on why depression is too common these days.

" Where is your evidence ?" I use metaphysics -- yes that's right -- as a away to break free from the influences that would lead me into thinking something a large group of people is already saying. Look closely: i created a little system of concepts here. We have creativity and rehash, with inspiration leading to the first and influence leading to the second. And then we have inspiration and depression as opposites. If you think metaphysics is like a dead proto-scientific way of thinking, your lovely teachers have done you one more disservice. Words have the power to change things and ourselves, and we are able to manipulate language at will. The lack of empirical evidence does not mean that an idea is worthless. You're ok with that? Then get this: " true or false " is not the only measure of worth, it is often the less relevant one...and is sometimes not even pertinent. I think analytical and mundane intellectuals are very important, but these days they seem not to realize that without people like me who seek out the uncanny they could achieve their world view and that means all of us would be fucked. "Can you imagine how a world of science and reason would be ? We would pave the way for a civilization that is whole, a civilization of progress, without religions and ideologies creating reasons for people to be on oposing sides, without misterious speculation and subjective nonsense sidetracking humanity from reality. Science would unite the world under one language: Logic. Beauty would be explained and more easily attained. Morality would be explained as the proper conduct for an individual to have as a member of the human species instead of anything complicated and hypocritical. Economies would be resource-based and well balanced with proper planning and powerful technology -- and ooooh the technology, dude! Robots would do the work for us! Drugs with no major side-effects and maximum efficiency would minimize pain and maximize pleasure! Cancer would be cured! " Oh someone sell a nuke to ISIS already.

No, serioulsy, if you think science as we know it can solve everything, we need to talk. Your world view is such a mess that i may as well agree that you are the devil . You think that giving science the status of " the way to solve anything serious " doesn't mean taking away art, spirituality and philosophy from the world. Let me remind you that artists and philosophers are not only motivated by making fancy little things and speeches but also by opening people's eyes and making fuel for change, same as you. Futhermore, art, philosophy and spirituality can reach people out in situations in which science cannot, those very much diverse forms of discovery and expression can make sense of different situations. The " we deal with serious stuff using science and have fun with the rest " plan is busted because artists, philosophers and those who find very deep knowlege in instrospection by their own way need their jobs, too, and their opinions should matter in the public debate too. You start telling kids that science is what everything else evolves into, that the other things like those silly philosophical speculations are just place holders for real scientific discoveries and the number of those kids that will try to be philosophers will drop with each generation, and then there will not be many philosophers left to do philosophy. That will reduce the ammount of different intelligent perspectives out there other than the scientific one. " Give all your jobs to us scientists, even the ones we're not sure what to do with yet, but, oh, we think the other stuff is also important " Love how that makes sense to some people. Oh here's another " Wanna know more about Islam and middle-eastern conflicts? Don't bother with an anthropologist that makes a living of knowing culture from several different perspectives, and don't even think about listening to a sociologist. Call a famous biologist or a charismatic neuroscientist instead. They will drop the wisdom ! " Science is neutral, but scientists are not. Treating scientists like almighty intellectual authorities is dangerous because they are often pretty fucking stupid when it comes to the topics they neglected in their studying. " Caravaggio ? I guess he did what he could before photography... " Problem solving benefits from multiple, deep perspectives working together, and you can't have that if society teaches us that it's ok to specialize on one thing and use it for everything and if society bankrupts people with a different take on reality.

If you like to go about writting things like " ten reasons why free will is an illusion " you are killing yourself and you are killing us. Stop it. Just because something doesn't fit in your laboratory it doesn't mean it's not irresponsible to say it's fake or bad without giving it better thought or using other methods that you are not used to. Not to mention that everytime you write or read a " X reasons why Y " an X² number of your brain cells die and Y is confirmed to be stupid bullshit. Our civilization makes us feel like machinery, life is dry and unispired for a lot of our people, because they are no longer able to look for their passion . Those people lost their ability to give meaning, because they think all meaning has to be found externally. I admire biology. Seriously, i do, and i'd be a biologist if i wasn't a committed whatever-the-hell-you-wanna-call-me. But i can't stress enough that there is a disservice that the advance in biology has done to mankind. One of our favorite ways to resign without letting it get into our egos ( that would force us to act ) is to blame nature, using all kinds of complicated but ultimately imbecile arguments to blame our pain and inability on fate. With the advance in biology, because of the excessive entusiasm that followed it ( possibly as backlash to creationist nonsense ), the naturalistic fallacy has gained so many complex variants that it's hard to avoid it without suspending your belief in modern biology, which you don't want to do. Where can we draw the line between explaining the differences that human males and females have and sexist assumptions making into our theories? That is just one example. Even political economy took some damage from this kind of line getting blurred. And biology is only one of the sciences that advanced creating side efects because we overreacted to those advances and because we won't waste an oportunity to cover our sins by abusing reason.

I supose that misunderstanting and underestimating creativity was fine when humanity knew too little about the world and being a little bit strange was enough for a person to stumble upon a new phenomena, a new form of energy, etc. But now our train's engine is low on power and malfunctioning after centuries without any maintenance, and we are in the middle of nowhere so we'd better get ready for a walk. It doesn't matter if free will is an illusion or not, it maters to know if it makes us stronger and if it may lead us into evolution, and i think the answer is yes. " Are you saying that you support desperate belief in lies and illusions ? " Well, if you've ever been to a dangerous neighborhood in Brazil you know the answer -- No, no, seriouly now, i think maybe you ask that because education did some damage on you. Things like " free will " that require belief in order to exist are not lies because of that fact. It's in your mind, it's driving you, so it may be giving you power to act where you would resign otherwise. I see more reality in ideas that lead to powerful actions than in suposed truths that lead to weakness. You may have been taught that faith is strictly a religious thing, because you were taught that faith is to believe in something regardless of evidence. Our books are wrong about metaphysics and they are wrong about this as well. Faith is about putting your energy and your concentration on ideas that you want to change reality with*³. For instance, i have faith that everyone is unique and that the universe is more beautiful with each human being that fulfils his/hers potential. It's not religion, it obligates me to follow no particular deity or rule, but you can't say it's philosophy because it doesn't require rational foundation and it's clearly not science or art either. But i want to stay driven by that, and inspire people around me with that. Is my faith a lie? Is it the truth? Both are bad questions. My faith isn't answering to the problem " what do i need to believe as true so that i can do what i want ? ". I don't have that problem. It's answering to the problem " how can i formulate what i want in words that can keep my mind focused on my passion? "

Creativity makes life meaningful, it bonds us, it makes us love each other and ourselves more, it grants beauty and excitement to the world. What could have possibly led humanity into ruining it through most of our history? I think that the zealots that tried to make the brilliant work of their masters and other individuals they admired into rules may have missed the point their heroes made. That's one interpretation, anyway. The real cause no longer matters at this point, what matters is what we're going to do about it. We share this world, so instead of letting it waste away with no meaning or plaguing ourselves with the addictions of our egos, we could take this Earth as a work of art in itself, as something we have the power to shape and grant a powerful meaning to. All individuals can have absolute value, not because " rights " or because some other makeshift philosophical justification that the law needs. The intellectual and emotional depth each of us can bring forth to our shared reality is a true treasure. All of us can excel, because each of us should be measured based on how much we bring ourselves into the world, on how much we improve upon ourselves because of our true passions, and not on some single standard that makes everyone with a soul want to kill themselves every once in a while. And as elevated and creative individuals that can love each other, we can shape the world as art, we can create a strong and beautiful masterpiece, our Magnum Opus.

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Notes:

*1 - It may take the culmination of a nuke getting dropped on some poor midle-eastern country for us westerns to realize that our way to handle terrorism is giving more people reasons to be terrorists, because our handling of terrorism is terrorism with better marketing. If that makes me sick imagine what it does to people living in war zones with twisted religious propaganda all over them . Real alternatives to war, reckless use of limited resources and the rest of the misery that is caused by society will not come until we break free from uninspired debates like " i'm a christian and Jesus told me everything " versus " i'm an atheist and i know science, that makes me so fucking cool ! "

*2 - Sure, there are all kinds of academic articles and lectures , spamming all kinds of quotes and taking all kinds of conclusions on all kinds of matters. But how many of them are questioning the academic formula itself ? How many of them are refusing that researching and writting in that particular manner is a requirement for one to be an academic? Many of the professors i have talked with about this agree that the academy is very limiting, and say that they have their personal blogs and spaces where they can be thenselves and show their own style, but why are they not questioning the very notion that being a professional is about accepting these shallow formalities? The people in charge of private and public universities don't force those standards on their employees (professors, you, etc.) because they care about such rules. They do it because they want to make damn sure that their investment or hiring choices are worth it. If they pay for a project to happen they want results. But with so many different sciences and arts that are so deep, they can't possibly have the expertise to discern that based on the quality of the work, which they don't understand. So burocracy is their only quality control. If burocracy shows a work is proper then it must be good. If respected professors started to say to public " hey, so, you are paying me to do fake work and to not do the real work i wanted to do and that could be useful for something. Take some of your stupid rules off me and i will cure cancer in a week " the rules would change and those professionals would prove that they are worth their salt.

*3 - Faith has been associated with religion because that is the only way to communicate with beings such as God or angels. You need to concentrate into the idea of it, because your senses won't give you any perception of such beings. In fact, God is the ultimate motivator. Believing in free will, originality, etc will give you strenght particular ways, but the idea of God has all the universe and all that is desirable in it. If you truly want to criticize religion for the sake of human evolution, you need to understand that this kind of faith is what spirituality is really about. The fanaticism our current religions bring is spoken against in most of our famous religious texts. The Quran, in particular, speaks very aggressively against idolizers, for instance. It says that they deserve death and hell should they not mend their ways. People tend to interpret " idolizers " as " non-muslims " but that is narrow-minded. To idolize is to take a particular being as something to worship. Celebrity worship is idolizing, dogmatism is based on idolizing certain particular ideas. In the Quran, idolizers turn the world hellish, because what they do is petty and creates endless petty conflict and futile pursuits that drives us all away from all that is worth living for. Wise, isn't it. Having an open mind pays off.