Human Rights in the New Millennium

by Maria Cristina Azcona

azcona@authorsden.com

www.spirit-mag.com

www.authors-inc.com/mariacristinaazcona

1. SOCIETY ILLNESS:

     Postmodern times are already installed in our lives.  Automation is here, with its universe of light blue and yellow wires surrounding us like satellites. Internet constructs fantastic buildings of free and quick communications between anybody elsewhere, surrounding the world.  New scientific methods, beyond the most psychotic imagination are capable nowadays of incredible effects like massive transplant of organs. Let us think about cloning, plastic surgery and other astonishing possibilities.

  Science has definitely had a tremendous progress towards an annoying technical perfection.

     But, where is the rule, the limit to all these novelties?

Who cares on the substantial victims of this advances?

Human life is not considered today as a principal theme compared to the sight of a beautiful shinny surface of a space shuttle initiating its new adventure towards the ending of times.

An ill humanity is one to whom life is not sufficiently important to stop pollution, because is produced by substances that we need for commercial purposes.

  We work, love and play in a sick civilization where values are only words, but blood is spread every minute and in every country like tomato sauce.

 Can we perceive any difference between the shocks on TV images? Sometimes we are not able to say if they are real or fictitious.

  Furthermore, we are so accustomed to the daily news that war seems not substantially gruesome when it takes place involving foreign nations.

  If the conflagration is at home, or connected to it, and generates a dreadful crisis everywhere we go, then we react with a sort of paradoxical

amazement.

   There is a lack of compromise in reference to the victims of social injustice, anywhere. We are not learned or prepared to make any movement that could possibly change an infinitesimal part of those torments. The lack of response is born from a consensus on a widespread idea:

 There must exist a reasonable cause for it.

Is impossible to help all the people.

Things have been always the same, through history.

Life continues.

This is progress. We cannot stop its advance.

  Naturally, there are international forums where debates take place among

specialists, and they should have the power to decide and solve all this

overwhelming disasters.

 International organizations for the defense of Human Rights, are not owners of the decisions. For the moment, they enunciate and make considerations and admonitions, other than use a power that nobody on earth is enough interested or motivated to give them.

Is there a necessary renovation of conventions about human rights in this Third Millennium?

 Yes, these organizations make annual or biannual meetings and declarations are proclaimed, but, in general, the interests of each nation, sheltered on their self-governing systems do not listen very carefully to their advice.

 There are different rhythms, different timings if we compare the process of those honorable assemblies and the burning urgencies of political matters. 

 Time is a tyrant, we say, but nobody worries on the time we are loosing while humanity goes faster and faster towards its own devastation.

 All the countries must use their eyes and see what is happening to this blue illusion, to this green, green valley, our universal home.

   If we consider Earth as our home and Humanity as our family, we will be able to consider the panorama of the worldwide situation.

  There are two aspects to be thought about.

 To be or not to be Shakespeare taught us.

 Ought to be done or ought not to be done is the second aspect to be considered.

 There are two kinds of discourses. One is made in the first level, the BE level. The other is made in the second level, the OUGHT TO BE level.

 Morality is in general left to one side. Nevertheless, is named and renamed. How many crimes there have been in the name of Goodness!

2.THE SOCIAL VICTIMS:

Women who, in a huge lack of knowledge, use industrial silicone instead of the good one, to insert in their breasts, because is cheaper. And then, they

realize there is no cure for the consequences.

Body –piercing and Tattoo followers who are too young to have conscience of what kind of damages they are creating to their bodies.

Babies of the Poverty, born from single teen-age mothers, who are sexually aroused sooner and sooner, thanks to a Media invaded by pornography.

Women executed to death only because they have been unfaithful to their husbands, in the name of the Law.

Victims of Terrorism. It seems that life has not the same significance to 

different ideologies.

Children starving to death because the governments of their countries have dilapidated the common richness in their own benefit.

Refugees who die trying to escape from inferno, looking for horizons of freedom.

Millions that are born and grow and get old, and die, without a miserable opportunity of a dignified job in countries where destiny is written by human hands.

People who are discriminated by the color of the skin, or because of their religious believe or even by their IQ measurement.

    The list is interminable.  

    Paradoxically, globalization is a great progress, in the sense of technique but progress is not global, in the sense of equal opportunities.

Mass media progress allows us to take notice of people suffering in other places.  And their beseeching eyes deeply excavate in our sensitiveness. . Their right to study, to be well fed or to be protected from brutality is truthfully denied to them.   There are children growing with envy of other children. They also see in their TV screens, because of progress, how others can enjoy life, while they are submerged into the hollow of times. They claim for justice but no one answers...and without any future at sight, they conceal their dissatisfaction under the mask of unbelievable philosophies full of Evil.  Of course, they don’t have the right to transform their frustration into violence, but it has occurred in front of our eyes.

   There is an entire generation that hate progress because they guilt it on their unhappiness. Ignorance is mother of Brutality and Frustration is mother of Hate. So, how can we be secure if violence is globalized? 

 There must be a way out of this situation. 

  The renovation of educational system in order to established, recognized values like Goodness, Justice, Honesty, Integrity, Truth, Honor and Heroism.

Overhauled laws, updated ideas, and a new concept of social justice could be studied. Human Rights are enough forgotten during this era of selfishness and acquisitiveness.

     Since pre-historical times our priority has been peace. A lovely fire and the old ones joined around the flames, with the children making familiar noises. Future went through, the years passed and children grew. Then, again and again up today. Nevertheless, nowadays thought confers to our young people damage upon submerging them in a fashionable self -centered style of living.  No more families around the fire or noisy kids owning the neighbourhood. Everyone is occupied in his own desperation. Panic attack is the modern name to the Nausea of Sartre Existentialism.

I have the right to be happy says a man, and goes far away from his wife and five children. Then, when these children grow full of hate and finish their travel in the drug paradise, their father will say: What happened? I am surprised!

 Individualism is the most direct route to depression.

 Consuming passion is no other thing than eating the bread of someone else before he notices.  Teresa de Calcutta once said: Do not invite me to dinner...with one hundred dollars I can feed a person for a month.

 Tragic times are these, and they are, in a roundabout way, the result of human rights depreciation.

These circumstances are somehow connected with heartless superficiality of the generation of the Third Millennium. They are not producers of the phenomenon but surely they are not helping to solve the dilemma.

3. THE CHILDREN RIGHTS

a.  Starvation

  In this era, we are arriving to an awful suspicion: food and water will not be enough to maintain an exploding population.  In front of our eyes, starvation is killing hundreds and even thousands.  Their right to live begins in their right to eat.

 Corruption is installed in the government of their countries. The population sometimes do not hear or see anything. Citizens walk at their side without a single word.

   The lattice of inconsiderateness hurts more than the knife of hunger.

Shamelessly, there are not many corporations taking the compromise to effectively save a particular starving child   

b. -Post-modern Family

  Certainly, nobody is enough concerned in these days about children right to live with both parents. In opposition, everybody cares about their own right to do whatever they want. Postmodern family is a new model of family constructed as a juxtaposition of kids from there and there. Is a very amusing way of living, but…what happens inside the brain and heart of these boys and girls?

  Family is the basic cell of society. So, what will happen to a society where

More than the half does not live into a familiar group? Nobody knows yet.

  More than a half of the children are born extra-family.

  We learned to respect values into a traditional model of family, where each person had a different role and a specific responsibility. Nowadays everything has changed, and not for good. There is a profound crisis around these topics. New models are installed in our minds when we say Family. However, we can’t take notice of the cost for future generations. 

c.Child abuse:

 Children are the seed of the future, but we are destroying their growth

since the very moment we denied to accept their lack of opportunities as our own fault. All of us, earth habitants, have a compromise with them.

We are the silenced witnesses of abuse.

  Exploitation is not only made while a child is used in a pornographic film.

Abuse is also made when a child is working in the streets under our eyes,

and we do not dare to help him. His eyes from TV screen accuse every adult who is not giving him the opportunity to grow.

  Humanity is responsible of child maltreatment because is leaving time pass not including this situation in the first place.

  Let us see him condemned to be a slave of the Third Millennium, because of his acquired idiocy.

4 INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS

   Society is worried on material matters, based in economical patterns and this attitude produces continuous violations against humanity, in the name of the highest principles.

  Invasion of other nations is endlessly justified saying that in those countries is not preserved the right of individuals. But, in the other side the unique question is

 Does this invasion promote the defence of integrity of the citizens and their homes? Does this situation preserve the protection of each individual? Or is the expression of the brutal force once again and again, used instead of dialogue and pacific terms of consolidation in the relationship between different cultures, as it ought to be?

  There is a necessity to study the importance of human rights, based in the effective application in every case. There are outstandingly well done declarations that are only seen as proper statements isolated from legal and practical matters. Governs are occupied in eternal quarrels about territories where human rights are continuously devastated and even ignored.

  It seems that humankind is not able to make a reasonable synthesis where authenticity of the moral judgments inserted in declarations of principles could reach the force of a commandment. It is a flagrant opposition between laws of the particular nations and the

international agreements on ethical purposes. Then, it is impossible to apply the decrees that are already consented, in a real-time term. We live in a cruel world where ignominious decisions are transformed, in short periods of time, in drastic actions against human life, without the minimum consideration on its importance. Day by day, month by month, we reach terrible levels of anguish seeing photos of babies starved to death and mothers submitted to the most pitiless indignity while men and women self-considered owners of the Right decide on their destinies and mark in the map the red signal of their ruin.

  Machiavellians of our times are ready to execute babies in the name of law.

Do not they see God in the face of every person? Are they able to use their cleverness to solve international conflicts in a benign form?

5 SOLUTIONS

Every so often, dreams are the threshold to the best solution

a In general:

To start an international well-done planning on decrees and commandments based in moral values, of equal meaning for everyone on earth.

To study the way to succeed in the equanimity in the future distribution of resources.

An unambiguous punishment must be applied to the criminals against human rights.

Education principles must be re-analysed to offer a better answer to these problems.

Science would possibly consider its own purposes, without laying at one side the ethical meanings related to human dignity.

Corruption in the government must be considered an attack to human rights, if its consequence is starvation and death.

Terrorism must be considered worst of all crimes against humanity.

b.  A feminine solution

Cherchez le femme

   Women of all religions, races and are going nowadays through a crucial statement of enhanced protagonism.

    Everywhere, young girls are studying strategies to survive or to make their future be possible.   But they are not sincerely satisfied with these achievements. They need something more, related to more profound meanings. They need to be better informed, in order to construct a new philosophical thought capable to sustain a reasonable value scale.

  Women are the key to solve Third Millennium troubles. Because they have a feminine eye that allows their vision to be more specific, more humanistic, more organized in projects involving a liveable future.

  This feminine eye could possibly take position in government and organizations. Like a wave of sweet velvet over a rough skin, women can transmute anguish into pleasure, agony into gratification, distress into fulfilment.

Men through all its spiteful history have managed the world.

  Perhaps the moment has arrived, the instant of womanly wisdom and cleverness.

  But intelligence is born from thoughts, and thoughts from reading.

  To read is the only way to have our brain well fed and ready to start this other war…  Education is, far from any doubt, the most direct route to peace. And women, those beautiful geniuses are, perchance, made to be natural educators.

 Remember when someone talked about Women power?

Perhaps this is the moment to use it in the better way: making to be possible…a global world of love.

  Women have their own way of doing all kind of things. The characteristic features of her wisdom are:

-Prudence

-Sweetness

-Detail

-Aesthetics

-Communication

-Intuition

-Care

-Love

-Peace

-Harmony

-Agreement

-Concurrence

-Cautiousness

-Forethought

-Anticipation

-Expectation

-Planning

-Respect

-Deference

  Maybe humanity needs a little of our poetic capability of dialogue and reconciliation. Of our sweetness and care for the weaker. Human rights

Are, first and foremost, children rights.

  Let us remember when the world talked about Women Power.

  Perhaps this is the moment to use it in the better way: making to be possible a global love. Love and care for every child no matter what colour his skin could be.

C The Lesson of Creation:

The ants

   Each one in his own job, each person in his own role, each grain in its own place, and the mountain could be transported from one place to another.

  When I was a little girl, I used to study the movements of the ants. I lived in a house with a beautiful garden. There were red, white and black ants. They were bigger or smaller, but their different species lived in some kind of harmony. They had separated territories and dissimilar needs. So they did not fight to each other, only if extremely necessary. Their sense of teamwork and cooperation was incredibly knowledgeable.

   We have learned that human beings are the most perfect expression of Creation

Then, possibly a little ant must be thinking: How nice it would be to live in a world governed by human beings.

A Foreword to the book FLAKES by Nikesh Murali By Maria Cristina Azcona    Wednesday, June 09, 2004      Download this Article

Foreword

Flakes by Nikesh Murali is an extraordinary work that combines beautiful images with philosophical aphorisms. He succeeds in drawing the attention of the readers to contemporary problems, which haunts us incessantly. Romance and its universal language are important ingredients in his literary works.

Culture grows on the shoulders of vanguards; its development is not a placid travel but an awesome awakening that endures millenniums. Murali dares to face the present and future of our planet without loosing the beauty of rhythm and its divine intent. The postmodern world is near that ‘Decadence’, which the poet describes in the last poem of this collection. The poet is in fact creating a mood to describe the fearless stance of the mind in the face of miseries and self-destruction, burning issues concerning human beings in the third millennium. What my own work (“Two Sizes less of Brain”, Caddan, 1999 and “Postmodern World”, Caddan 2001) sustains as ‘Social Poetry’ is nothing more than ‘Art’. Though critics have categorized this as ‘Critical Art’, they have failed to include its intention. Literature from this point of view has the sacred purpose of modifying the vile world. But how can we transform reality with the single weapon of our lyrics?

Murali’s poetry possesses the ability to of moving the heart and brain at the same time. Allegories, metaphors, choice of melodious words and constructions are used as literary edifices to seek refuge from the ugly characteristics of the age. Post-modernism has swallowed cultural meanings and covered literature with a cloudy gown of anti-aesthetic realism, but the poet refuses to shut his eyes to the poverty, hunger, violence and injustice surrounding him. He remains sensitive and profound, transporting our cognitive thoughts towards righteousness.

“Flakes” is organized in three parts: Life, Love and Loss.

The “Beggar Boy” appears in the first place of “Life” as a message (Poverty is a black hole in the heart of this age). Like a shark, biting our heart, with a valuable intention he writes:
“Can a pleasant scent erase.
This living portrait of disgrace”.

In “Godman (A devotee canvassing fervently!)” the author makes an overwhelming, admonitory announcement about the evil in this world.

“Flow free,
Join the spree.
The tormenting end
Is about to come”

Afterwards, the soft, tangible music of his poetry grows freshly in “The Window”, “Train Journey”, “In the Park” and other poems. The hypnotic rhythm of his poetry rocks us like babies. The surprising happiness of being alive, in the middle of “a valley of tears” gives the poetry of Murali a beautiful kind of spontaneity. Ideas float freely inside his river of thoughts, without fear.

In “Move Ahead” the poet encourages us to follow our lives
“Through paths that bend and unbend”.

In “Tales” he plays freely with words that reverberate and charms us with its splendor. We understand, at this very moment, what the author intends to convey through the title of the book. Words are little dwarfs in our minds; constructing and de-constructing every sentence, like snow flakes over a gray surface.

At the beginning of the second part we are powerless to escape from his passionate feelings and his lively power.

“Love” describes the sensuality and deepness of this young spirit who is in harmony with a universe inside our own souls. With a resplendent emphasis he enjoys life, love and the innocence of nature, in its all-enamoring purity.

In the poem “EARTH JEALOUS LOVER”
“I detest the warm sun that caresses you”



But he never disappoints our critical view and he always includes a philosophical request.

In the poem “A SONG FOR MY BROTHER”
“Where is the truth?
Where is the love?”

“Warrior and the Moon” is one of the best poems in the book. Here, the author uses an allegory. He describes two characters: the Warrior and the Moon, and their fantastic love story. There are two levels of interpretation: A literary message and a philosophical one. It is a major endeavor that showcases beautiful poetic language.

“Once again he boarded Santer.
But this once, in a fit of fury.
Reached atop in a flash,
His blind anger ready to slash”

The message underneath the poem is that violence never conducts us to happiness. Humanity is, just like the Warrior, in a continuous hurry, involved in a frenzied form of self-destruction. Abandoning this tendency will open its eyes to the value of life, love and spiritual ecstasy.

Far away from pessimism, we enter into the third part “Loss”. In an instant he introduces us to the fiercest monsters of mankind.

“Flying beasts that ate you all
Swallowed the peaceful globe”

A touch of dark humor is best shown in “The Fly that Dies”




When the poet writes “Decadence” he interprets this era from a peculiar point of view. It leaves the reader with a very visual and poignant feel of the state of the world and is ample evidence of the author’s impeccable control over the language.

“Another decade has passed,
Creating a blockade in millions of hearts
Its huge fins churning pools of blood,
The whale moves on its deadly quest”

Murali is definitely a brilliant poet, whose work stimulates our soul even as life nosedives uncontrollably, going faster and faster to embrace a cruel ending.
He is a courageous leader braving the abyss of postmodern times, just like ‘the Warrior’ who does not will to use any other weapon other than his own authenticity.

Maria Cristina Azcona.2002.

 

Education for a new Millennium By Maria Cristina Azcona    Wednesday, May 19, 2004      Download this Article

by Maria Cristina Azcona

Education for a New Millennium 

by Maria Cristina Azcona

azcona.authorsden.com

Argentina 

 Introduction:

 

 

 During last years, humanity has developed immense growth in technical aspects and practical sciences. Paradoxically, philosophy is only sustaining weak advances and modifications which are uniquely trying, without any success, to justify and be at the side of rushing changes at daily news referred to human life, in general.

Philosophy of Education is not out of this situation. The needs of the future individuals, and groups are in a severe danger of being forgotten by this important area of wisdom.

 Modern technologies as Internet communications are only comparable to the invention of Gutenberg.      A total revolution is winning the career where the looser will be not the Theorists of Education but the next generation who is not receiving any chance to be formed in good way. The sophistication of practical sciences advances is not being accompanied by a well-designed educational basis, worldwide.

 Modern thinkers on Education must join efforts, abandoning any care about their individual fame, seeking after Goodness for the entire human community, under strong moral principles where their science must be firmly set.

  First and foremost, we need to make a correct diagnosis about the weak points and the correspondent necessities of the pupil of this era. We can observe that the different countries have similar problems to solve, if we quit apart the societies that live in the First World. They have other problems, other idiosyncrasy.

 

Problems

 

·        Malnutrition determining lower IQ.

·        Lack of equanimity in the individual chances towards success in education.

·        Lack of interest in any activity that needs concentration.

·        Hustle, anxiety and hypervelocity of life, leaving patience aside.

 

 

Needs

 

·        A solid basis made of moral values common to every culture and even religion.

 

·        A solid instruction around modern technologies of self/learning.

 

·        A fluid interest towards the study of languages.

 

·        A strong acceptance of the necessity of continuous education along life.

 

·        A speeder logic scheme of thought, adaptable to modern activities.

 

·        An adequate environment at school, adapted to modern characteristic

·        of the attention and motivation.

 

·        A formed teacher who manages technologies, strategies, theories, fluidly.

 

·        A non discriminative programme which include the education orientated against terrorism, fanatism, fundamentalisms of any flag

·        and discrimination of any colour.

 

 

 

Then, the education programme for the future generations must achieve consciousness about the following aspects to be developed as objectives in the short, medium and long objective.

 

 

 

Objectives

 

·        A profound level of thought based in high and simple moral values.

 

·        Good habits, good behavioural patterns.

 

·        A solid and at the same time flexible way of thinking, not based in prejudices or pre/conceptualisations.

 

·        An open mind orientated towards wisdom, beginning in healthy curiosity, all the time, which looks after knowledge and understanding of the Truth.

 

·        A capability of study new technologies in a non-stopping manner.

 

·        An operative acknowledge on calculation and recognition of arithmetical symbols.

 

·        An operative acknowledge of native language and other.

 

·        Awareness of the necessity to be continuously informed about geography, biology, history and other sciences.

 

·        Capability to understand symbols like maps, digital maps, and to search for information in Internet resources.

 

·        Capability to have an independent logic thought, based in strong developed abilities.

 

·        Capability to manage resources of any kind, with a critical eye on the selection of material.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, we can mark two great routes to be followed if we are interested in the substantial modification of the educational meanings.

 

·        The education of the pupils towards being citizens of the world and not only citizens, where they develop awareness of their responsibility about human rights and social goodness.

 

·        The guarantee that every pupil will receive equal opportunity to be instructed in technologies and languages.