'The city and the stars' by CLARKE, A. C.

‘In this universe the night was falling; the shadows were lengthening towards an east that would not know another dawn. But elsewhere the stars were still young and the light of morning lingered; and along the path he once followed, Man would one day go again’.

CLARKE, A. C. - The city and the stars

I had heard about Arthur C. Clark for its short story called “The Sentinel” which was the origin for the Stanley Kubrick's movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”, but I had never read anything of him before. Then, this book came across and I could not resist. I managed to finish it just in few days, as it wasn’t possible to stop reading it.

To be honest, I didn’t realize at first that the book was from this author who made a huge contribution for the science fiction literature genre and was knighted by the British as well as awarded by Sri Lanka with the highest civil honour for his work.

‘The city and the stars’ is about the human race and the projection of its nature in the future. Breaking up with the limit of a little time frame of some decades, centuries or just millenniums – as all traditional literature does, the author lead us to some millions of years ahead, when human beings eventually forgot about dominating all the universe and kept all their might to dominate their own destiny by keeping it apart from the rest.

The book tells us the story of Diaspar, what is believed to be the last human city, where diseases, food shortage and even death were just sorted out and the sun always shines through its artificial sky. Where people never get older neither are born or die nor even need to sleep. Where machines take control of almost everything which could ever bother men and society lives just for their own pleasure.

In Diaspar, if people get tired of their life experience, which could last for a thousand years if one likes it, they just can choose go through the hall of creation and refresh that again, being reintegrated into society randomly many years afterwards and even get their memory back as they wish, erasing the bad experience that they might not need nor want to keep in mind.

Diaspar is a living, eternal and perfect city with the most complex social structure ever created, but capable of delivering the perfect life for its inhabitants who wish no more of it. In order to keep it functional and safe from collapsing, the central computer takes care of the city’s patterns to a micro-level, including the city’s culture and individual configuration, so everybody shares compatible visions which maintains the status quo of the city. No one would ever wonder what would there be across its boarders, neither even thinking about the possibility of getting out of the city. No one, it seems, but Alvin.

Alvin, the main character of the book, is different from its companions. He seems to have this uncontrollable wish for meeting the unknown. This feeling is shared with no one else within the city and he is perceived as an alien when his ideas come forth. Alvin is not able to understand why people’s thoughts cannot go further the limits of the city and the time it was created. He set himself up to a search for answers which brought him to understand his own purpose and the human condition itself.

It is possible recognise many philosophical issues as Alvin steps on his path for knowledge and the author does not miss the opportunity to criticise many of our current social values using an almost naïve-sounded narrative. Nevertheless, it seems that, just as J. R. R. Tolkien once put it on his forewords to his second edition of ‘The Lord of the Rings’, Arthur C. Clark makes use of an ‘applicable’ story instead of allegories. Tolkien said that he would prefer an applicable narrative than allegories simply because if the first one belongs to the reader and its capacity to cross situations and possibilities to create new interpretations, the second one belongs to the author, hiding the real meaning from those who cannot grasp what the author really means.         

While reading the book it is hard to believe that it was published in 1956. Some of the technological terms and ideas look very up-to-date which gives more credit to the author’s imagination.

Imagination is for sure one of the elements that drags me into science fiction. These stories exercise the free thought and create whole scenarios, worlds, races, happenings that go much further the usual. Some times than can be really accurate, just over exaggerating trends that can be seen today. Other stories, though, prefer give the most inaccurate explanations, justifying that even what we think about reality today, is actually a very small and limited grasp of what will be found in the future about what the universe laws really are.

Nevertheless, it is not just imagination itself that stick me on Science fiction, but this melancholy of understanding that human beings are always incomplete for having a huge capacity of developing and learning without embracing the real reason for their existence. Some recurrent feelings many times lay down on science fiction which I believe go on the direction of what the famous quote from writer Oscar Wilde says ‘There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it’.

The Arthur C. Clarke's book ‘The city and the stars’ is a classic for science fiction fans as well as other genres readers. I assess rather a book is worthy reading by the feeling it gives me when I finish it. If the book did things such as making me think, travel my mind, or understand things, then it was worthy reading it.

As my last words, this book reminds me of a short story called '2 B R 0 2 B' which I read some years ago by Kurt Vonnegut. It is a very short which tell us about a future were the world is just fine: no wars, famine, or death. You can find the link below .

Text: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21279/21279-h/21279-h.htm  

Audio (unabridged): http://ia700401.us.archive.org/7/items/short_scifi_005_0804_librivox/2br02b_vonnegut_bh_64kb.mp3    

“The Secret History of the World” by Jonathan Black

When I was young, I used to be very keen on conspiracy theory, secret societies, occultism, esoteric knowledge and so on. I would be entertained the whole afternoon reading books about UFO’s, Bermuda Triangle, Rosicrucianism, Gnosis, Essenes, Vimana Aircrafts, Lemuria, Atlantis, Skull and Bones, and a lot more. I think it is rather natural, once every childish and teen book shows mystery and magic in their pages and plots. I would say that, at least, while reading this kind of books I was taught to have the necessary attention and get the habit of reading and that would help me a lot in the future. Growing old, off course, I learned that I should spend my time reading better literature and I set aside those books to get into adult issues such as economy, business, philosophy, politics, science and non-fiction writings. But, time to time, I keep my self puzzled with this desire of reading about this non-conventional kind of knowledge and I can not help myself. It might be a desire to be younger and get in a journey to the mysterious world again without worrying about reason or the reality.

It was in one of those occasions that the “The Secret History of the World” by the American Jonathan Black came across. For some reason, that I cannot remember, I was talking to this Irish old man who I happened to know in the library and he recommended it to me. People are used to recommend to me a lot of books. Unfortunately, I cannot take all the reading suggestions, but that one, specifically, I got without thinking.

I enjoyed reading this book. It has a good length and I took maybe three or four weeks to finish it. And the funny stuff was to get stuck days and days with the ideas presented by Jonathan Black. I kept wondering about many things and I did many questions on its contents and I am to say that it was a very good exercise for the mind. I said exercise and I meant that because I know that it is quite hard to believe in everything that is in the book. Some things make sense; others are rather completely out of reality, and many others can be taken or not as facts to his theory depending on someone’s point of view.

But the author starts with a very positive point. He has worked in publishing for over twenty years and his book is the result of many and many years reading literature in this area. You can feel his experience throughout the book. It has a lot of well-known books references and many pictures to illustrate what is being taught. The way he manages to link the ideas and the facts on the history of the world is quite interesting and makes sense at some point.

Jonathan Black says in the beginning of the book that he will show the history of the world in a way that the reader has never seen before: upside down, inside out and the other way around. Black says to be preparing the reader’s spirit to a journey where the universe is being given birth.

He explains many ideas on esoteric stream and tries to rebuild the conception of the whole universe using the beliefs belonged to secret societies. For all ideas within the book some of them caught strongly my attention: the idea of the universe being in an evolution movement, the idea that the cosmos has a strong influence in our day-by-day experiences and the fact that the universe is in a processes of materialization.

He explains that the whole universe starts with something less dense or consistent than the matter and the beginning of everything was when this thing started the processes of being materialized. This process of being materialized created and continues creating this experience that is the existence of the universe. Throughout the times this processes got velocity and each time, the universe as we see is more materialized than ever.

When the cosmos was being created and getting places to the material things, the universal consciousness was on the move of progressing, influencing and being influenced by the cosmos itself.

At certain point he explains some ages and how the movements of the planets and stars were felt in the living experience. Long before the sun be the centre of our system, Saturn used to be the biggest influence and the laws and the experience of life was much heavier that it is now. Saturn was the reference of God and the bible shows us the God of the Old Testament. When the sun approaches he changes the laws and starts a new age, which is referred as the New Testament in the bible.

Although the author explains that much of what is in the bible is actually an allegory about what happened with the stars, he says that the facts described could be perfectly true, once what happens in the cosmos happens here and everywhere in the Universe. The life of Jesus Christ would be a mark to represent the coming of the sun, for example.

Other intriguing idea is that the evolution of the human being comes from the kingdom Plantae. He explains that the Genesis tell us the story when the human being breaks the condition of being plants and start to walk in the path we are now. He says that once a plant, someone would never die, would just follow the movements of the earth and would never care about being feed or something else (being in the Paradise for ever). But it looks that this condition was broken when those beings discovered the sex. They would exchange DNA information and give birth to another being apart from them and this creationism would change the way life was being carried until then.

Jonathan Black follows the footsteps of the humankind and points out the changes in the Universal Consciousness throughout moments in our history. He presents many authors and many situations when something was seemed to change towards the evolution of the universe. In addition, pictures from renascence artists, diagrams from well know masters of philosophy and other visual materials held by secret societies are showed and explained in accordance with what is being said.

The Secret History of the World has to be read with the critic feeling off and the creative will on. A little piece of imagination would not make someone mad and could be very enjoyable. The book might flourish some philosophical ideas in someone's mind.

For example, in accordance to the Big Bang Theory, or model, the universe was very hot and dense and than expanded very fast and has since cooled by expanding to the present diluted state. It, as it is considered, is still expanding.

Ok. But the Big Bang Theory cannot tell us the beginning, but just maybe a second step on the creation of the universe. Scientists came to the conclusion that matter cannot have originated matter, but matter has to be originated by something more subtle. In addition, the big bang did not create any laws, as it was thought before. The laws of the universe have to be there before any matter or any happening. If there were not any laws, such as gravity, or time, space, continuity and so on, nothing would have happened.

In the book “The Secret” they say that the thought is the seed to grow something in the universe. You have first to imagine something to bring it real to the mind and then it will be real in the material state.

In the Bible’s Genesis, the creation of the world was done by the command of the God’s voice: “And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”

Voice is the ultimate manifestation of a thought; therefore, maybe the Abraham’s religion would have thought this allegory to show the rules of the creation of the universe. Someone, through speaking, is putting your ideas to the external world and they start to be taken as real, very different when those ideas were inside of your mind.

The Genesis might have imagined a Holy Spirit who got start to the universe through the manifestation of his mind. This supreme mind is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent because the holy universe is just part of him. But at some point God created man and, as it is showed in the Genesis, God created man in his on image. Once created in God’s image, the man could create and transform things as God himself could. The man maybe is the edge of the consciousness of the universe and might have the position of understanding the already existent laws and use them to create experiences within the universe.

Many scientists believe that the universe might replicate itself all the time and it is a kind of idea that Hindus have about our existence. Ancients Hindus used to treat the human condition as a “dreaming condition”. A human is a dreamer that creates all the time universes through the process of dreaming (or thinking strongly). Human beings create in their minds worlds and they jump to live in them. It just to show what is the power of thinking. The thinking can do everything: since change someone’s reality until create another completely different reality. Therefore, here in this frequency or condition we share together, we are living with six billions people on earth and it might have 6 billions of different worlds just interacting because we are in the same frequency. For the ancient Hindu, we are never awaken, and even though we thing we are sharing a reality; each person has one reality and is ruled by their individual laws.

Maybe this was the way the universe has found to reach high consciousness: through many minds and different experiences testing many possibilities to add to the universal knowledge and wisdom.

The idea showed in the book that the cosmos influences our lives and that religion teaches us through allegories about those moves, can be seen as well in the Zeitgeist - the Movie. The writer Acharya S, whose real name is D.M. Murdock, treats this issue in a very interesting way. This material can be seen on the follow address, in pdf format: http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/zeitgeistsourcebook.pdf

Finally, the point that the author says that human beings came from the kingdom Plantae can at least be considered as a not so out of reason idea. Have you ever seen the tree man?

Well, I recommend “The Secret History of the World” by the Jonathan Black saying that it is a good reading experience, a pleasant one. As Shakespeare put it in Hamlet:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

The Story of India by Michael David Wood

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and awarded an honorary degree by Sunderland University, Michael David Wood is an English historian and broadcaster who has presented many documentary series, documentary films and written books on English history.

This time he takes us to a journey to India and manages to give us a view on its ten-thousand years of history and how India has become, as he puts it, the laboratory of the humanity. The enchanting narrative coloured by his excitement on the subject lead us to the subcontinent of Asia, the most populous democracy in the world, with over 1.2 billion people, and the place that have given birth to the most influential civilizations on Earth and where humankind might has learned to think towards the development of cultures.

He begins telling us about the first humans who stepped on there, which is believed to have taken place 70,000 years ago when sea levels were 200 feet lower then they are now, allowing travel from Africa via long-since submerged land bridges. Through archaeologist discoveries, Wood shows how the first human settlements were like and how they probably managed to raise civilizations and then its follow declines. He gives us a sense about climate changes that has shaped the region and the historical background to explain the turns in the cultural and social developments which have affected the India’s population minds.

Michael Wood explores every aspect of the country, talking about its geography, the recent economy growth, the Indian caste system - social stratification and social restrictions in India in which social classes are defined by thousands of endogamous hereditary groups – the most important historical figures – such as Gandhi – and about the world's major religious traditions which were born in there - Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. The ideas have flourished in the place since mankind has settled there and their power has changed everything since then until nowadays.

In India the present meets the past and the future constantly and contrasts are seemed to be a very strong reality all the time. Although it is a country, it doesn´t mean that it has any kind of uniformity. The diversity is showed everywhere: in ideas, in religion thought, in culture, in customs, in ethnic groups and even in wildlife.

The author explains that some of the rulers in the past knew how to handle with this diversity and bring prosperity to the whole society through the mutual respect. For my astonishment, for example, Woods brings to the light the Muslim conqueror named Zahir ud-din Muhammad Babur (1483-1530), who managed to rule his empire without any religious discrimination, accepting every kind of religious traditions.

After the British, India organized itself as a country in the modern sense to get position in the international politics, but the country still have more than 500 religions and sects, many spoken languages and dialects and it is the most intercultural places in the world.

The Story of India by Michael Wood is an amazing and "hard to put down" book and I recommend it for sure. Although the book brings us some extraordinary pictures it would be a great idea find out some more visual materials in the internet in order to understand this magnificent place.

This book is the result of the BBC series about India. There is a same name DVD presented by the author. To find out more, please visit the link bellow.

http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/timeline/1/

The Secret garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

I just read this book and I am very impressed. Somehow it reminded me of the book ‘The little Prince’, the kind of book that has this childish appeal but can be very suitable for adults. The secret Garden tells us a charming story about friendship, magic, keeping secrets, nature and growing old.

The plot brings us Mary Lennox, a spoilt and sickly girl who lives in India. After the death of her parents who died from a cholera epidemic, she is brought to England to live in an enormous mansion which belongs to her uncle who she has never met before.

As she arrives at Misselthwaite Manor, the place where she is going to live in, she seems to get no sympathy from anyone, neither looks interested in making any friends at all. Her sallow face, thin body and her rude manners, common to a person who was used to have servants and treat them with a disdaining attitude, cannot help her being a so appalling figure.

Back in India, she used to have an Ayah, a person who used to be paid to take care of her, and Mary wouldn’t do anything by herself, neither to be dressed. Her parents would never speak to or take care of her themselves. She was brought up with many people obeying her demands and, although she never has thought about it before, she became a very selfish child. But things are going to change when she realizes that now she needs to take care of herself and that anyone would look after her in the same manner she was used to.

The mansion, as she was told, has many rooms; hundreds of rooms, which some could be visited and others don’t. Mrs. Medlock, the housekeeper, tells her about the place and about her uncle, Mr. Archibald Craven. She says that Mr. Craven has lost his wife ten years ago and because of that he lives in a great sorrow and he hardly is at home; being the most part of the time travelling around.

Being in the mansion, Mary starts to talk to some of the staff and she meets Marta, whose mother has twelve children. Although Mary has her bad manner to treat people around, Marta seems to be a little interested in her, mainly because Mary comes from India, an exotic place that she has heard many things about but she has never been to. Mary gets interested in Marta as well because she has this mother with many children and a funny or rather peculiar accent from Yorkshire.

Marta is a maidservant who has this charming frankness and a rather approach to all aspects of life. She tells Mary to play outdoors over the moor and that would be good for her health as well as a good way to spend her time enjoying herself. Marta tells Mary that she can go everywhere and that the mansion has many gardens and space to play around.

Mary goes out every day and starts to enjoy being outdoors. She begins to grow fatter and stronger and be transformed in other kind of creature. Afterwards something very special puzzles her mind and makes her interest of being outdoors much bigger: the existence of a Secret Garden.

Her uncle’s wife had a garden just for her. She used to work on it, grow flowers and other plants and spend lots of time there. After her death, Mr. Craven decided to close this garden and bury its key. It was ten years ago and no one seems to have put a foot on there since then. Mary becomes fascinated with the idea of a secret garden that no one has been into and starts looking for it and finding a way to get into there. One day she finally gets her way to find the key with a little help from a robin and opens the door of the secret garden.

She is just astonished with the discovery and decides keep it in secret. When she steps in, she finds the place a little dead and worries about the situation. She wants the place to be lively again with many flowers and plants and green in it.

One day, while talking to Marta, Mary happens to know that the maidservant has a brother who has lived in the moor his entire life and seems to know everything about nature, flowers, plants and other growing things as well as living things that happen to live in the moor. Through Marta, she meets her brother, named Dickon, and shows him her secret garden and asks him rather he could help her bring it to live again. Dickon is delighted with the idea and starts helping her. He agrees with telling no one about it.

So they come every day into the garden spending the whole day inside its walls without anyone having notice. Mary gets to know a lot about gardening, animals and the moor from Dickon as she gets stronger and stronger in body. But suddenly, the weather stars to change and it begins to rain without stopping for long days.

In those raining days, she is obliged to stay at home because there is no way going out with this so heavy rain. While she is in the mansion she starts to hear some weird noises, something very similar to a child crying. She finds that very weird indeed as she knows that the only child in the whole mansion is herself. She asked to the staff but everyone says that maybe the noise is the sound of the wind through the windows and corridors.

Not satisfied with the wind theory, she begins to walk through the corridors and rooms trying to follow the crying. For her astonishment, one night she finds a room where the crying seems to come from. As she gets into the room she is surprised by a figure of a boy laying in the bed and crying.

This boy looks at her with amazement and with a puzzled face in the same way she is looking at him. The boy has not known about her stay and she neither about his existence. They both start to talk and know each other and Mary finds that this boy is Craven´s son and his name is Colin.

The Colin´s mother died while giving birth to him. Mr. Craven never sees his son because of his resemblance to her and because he thinks that the boy is very sick and would not live much longer. The family’s doctor says that Colin in fact very sick and keeps him in bed all day. The boy cannot walk and has a nurse to be with him during the day.

Mary and Colin start to meet every day and she tells him about stories from India and about the gardening stuff. Although she has the intention to keep secret about the hidden garden, she every day talk about it without telling him that she in fact has already found it.

Collin is a very imperious and gloomy and talks about die all the time. But somehow Mary likes him and tries to be friend of him. The idea of the secret garden seems to inspire the boy’s mind and Mary notices that.

After a while raining, the sun appears and Mary comes back to the outdoors activities. She promises being back at evenings to see Colin but she realizes that Colin is very mad about being alone without her during the day. After a big argument she decides to tell him about the garden saying that he in fact is not sick or hunchback, as everybody thinks, and he has to come and be outdoors with her. She says that he is weak because of being in the bed all day.

She asked to Dickon to help pushing Colin’s wheelchair and to bring him to the garden and Dickon comes the follow day to do this job. Colin demands that no staff should be around the garden while he is outdoors and that they should be left alone without any interruptions. It was his way to keep her mother’s garden in secret.

They three go to the garden and they spend all day there, almost every day. Colin finds that he can walk and all of them start take exercises and fresh air. With the spring on, the garden comes alive and they work on the soil and see the flowers and plants growing as well as the birds coming around. The place is full of life and energy and it affects directly Colin´s health transforming him into as healthy boy as anyone else.

Being now a different creature, he tries to hide that from everybody in the house. He wants to improve his health in a way that he can be considered as a strong boy and very different from to a sickly child. He wants to prove to his father that he is in fact well and he is not going to die anymore, being possible growing old. Colin wants be accepted by his father and have a father who would be proud of him. And because of that he doesn’t want anyone to tell his father before he is confident about his health.

Spending time in the garden they three built a strong friendship and it becomes a brand new world to Colin who starts to be more generous and not an appalling figure as before. They think that the garden has magic that transforms everything and they start a sort of everyday praying to this magic wishing better days and the improvement of their health. In the end everything is alright and their wishes seem to come true.

The secret garden is a charming, fascinating and touching book. It talks about many issues in human behaviour and about what a child needs to grow stronger in body, in spirit and in soul. Many things that are showed in the book are about natural religion, natural magic and positive thinking as well as love, determination and perseverance. The beginning of the last chapter shows clearly what kind of person Frances Hodgson Burnett might have been and what she had in mind while writing a so beautiful story.

“In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done--then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts--just mere thoughts--are as powerful as electric batteries--as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.”

I find that more profound than self-help ideas. It has to be with a high understanding of life, a language to be understood only by the heart. For me she had her point that children need a good environment and love to be brought up properly. And love is showed in the whole book and the transformations that love can do when it is cultivated.

“Where, you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.”-The Secret Garden, Ch. 27

Frances Eliza Hodgson, Frances Hodgson Burnett , was born on 24 November 1849 in Manchester and died on 29 October 1924 in Plandom, New York.

The Secret Garden was first published in 1911 and it is currently in the public domain.

To find out more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Hodgson_Burnett

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Garden

http://librivox.org/the-secret-garden-by-frances-hodgson-burnett/ (unabridged talking-book)

The Occupational Hazards - My Time Governing in Iraq: Rory Stewart

I once said that “The places in between” was the best book I read in 2009 but in fact, at the time I put that into words, I had not read the Rory Stewart´s “Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq” yet. So I am to say that both of them were my best reading experience in 2009. Although one is not the sequence of another, there is a feeling that the first one is on episode and the second one is another episode of the Stewart´s adventures. I keep wondering when others episodes will come and sometimes I find myself quite excited about it. Excited is, I believe, the right word to be used, because whatever the future holds to him, I believe that will be everything but ordinary. What could we expect from a scot born in Hong Kong, brought up in Malaysia, a former soldier who crossed Asia on foot, has a strong will, an intellectual personality and a very good sense of humanity?

In April 2009 Rory Stewart was in his home, in Highlands of Scotland, after a twenty-month-walk throughout Asia, as can be seen in his “The places in Between”. When the invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, Stewart sent his resume to the foreign office, although he had already resigned from being a diplomat serving in the British Embassy in Indonesia before his walk-adventure. As he never got a reply, he decided to go on his own to Iraq and ask for a job from the director of operations. Once in Baghdad, he walked along the city observing everything and describing afterwards in this book what he saw in the Iraq´s capital after the U.S.- led invasion.

Returning back to Britain, the Foreign Office asked him, firstly, to be governorate coordinator deputy in Maysan, a province which lay in the Marshes just north of the Garden of Eden, near Iranian border. The Foreign office gave him this job because of his experience in a post-war environment (he was in Afghan soil after the U.S. invasion) and because he could spoke a little of Arabic and some Farsi (Persian – Iranian language).

I do not know what he had in his mind doing something like that and he did not say either. Probably because he was too shy to admit his seeking for adventure I suppose. The book, actually, is his account on his experience governing two provinces in Iraq and, unlike his first book; it is not written as it was a diary but something similar to a memoir, with a fantastic description of scenes, historical background, politic issues, cultural configuration and others aspects that built that specific moment in the History of that country. He managed to put the reader very close to the reality he was going through.

The main point that he tried make the readers be aware of was that the culture was far away from what the occident was used to. He tried to explain the tribal leaders thinking, the Islamic militias, communist dissidents and the interest of the Iranian intelligence agents on Iraq. He dealt with many problems and found himself drowned in a pool of conflicting interests which seemed to be impossible to be dealt with. But despite of all problems and the threatening environment, Stewart´s beliefs in democracy and freedom managed him to be confident and get some respect from the local people.

But respect was not enough in that environment and things gone worse. He tried rebuilt the area and deliver confident to its people drawing ideas on economic growth and social identity, but as soon he realized that problems were far away from be solved, he struggled to keep his position and security.

What he experience in his last days governing in Iraq, would make any other fellow give up the place and to promise never put a feet on there again nor get involved in Arabic issues. But, not surprisingly coming from him, after concluding his role in the government, Stewart continued involved and he established, as Executive Chairman, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a human development NGO, in Afghanistan, and relocated to Kabul.

Nowadays, he has been the Member of Parliament for Penrith and the Border, in the county of Cumbria, North West England. His work as a Member of Parliament can be seen at http://www.rorystewart.co.uk/. He keeps a blog and the twitter for those who like to follow him and find out more about him.

I recommended “The Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq” saying that it is an astonishing, thought-provoking, fascinating and at the same time shocking and breathtaking book. It has a very important historical value as well.

And some companies say they are competitive...

I am a business administration student and some times I can´t help me looking at companies mistakes in Brazil. The business administration course in Brazil is so popular and wide attended that just in my city there are 14 institutions offering it. My city has 500 thousand people. It is probably that more than three hundred people graduate in business administration every six months and over six hundred people a year. It is quite a big number, isn´t?
We could imagine that there are so many good people knowing about procedures, costumer care, production control and so on that we are in fact building a good path to turn our country competitive. Everybody says that and a large number of people believe in that. But the problem is that it is not true.
Despite the fact we are “creating” professionals and teaching professional skills for many people, our country is still struggling with our culture. And our culture is quite strong to be put aside. What aspect of our culture am I talking about? Well, I am talking about the fact that Brazilian people are never worried in doing the best thing at the best time in the best way. We always are worried in doing things that we should have been done yesterday. So we are always doing these things in the faster way, in a delayed time and in the easiest way possible (not in the best way to do).
It is annoying. And it is annoying because the quality passes by.
I happened to be looking for suppliers for one project and I had to be in touch with many companies throughout the country. I spent almost 2 mouths trying to contact companies in different sectors. After contacting almost two hundred companies, I just received answer from less than ten of them. Is it possible? It would be just 5% of return. And I have to say that many of them took many days to contact me back.
It is funny because I was interested in being their costumer. I was not doing span or something like that. I started my contact with “I would love to know more about your company and your products...” and do you believe that many of them were not engaged in getting this opportunity to show themselves to a potential costumer?
I was told by my friends that maybe I took the wrong addresses, but I don´t think so. Is it possible I took 190 wrong addresses? Even if these addresses were in fact wrong, it would not be something positive and it could not put them out of guilt from being unprofessional companies; it is their responsibility to keep their contact updated.
But anyway, the wrong addresses possibility is out of question once my e-mail service would say that the contacts were not delivered. I didn´t get any notice from it.
In an accidental situation I met this guy who were the salesman of one of those companies that I didn´t get any answer. In this occasion I was not tough, but I was not with that smiling face. After greeting I told him “So it is pretty coincidence see you here. I was really interested in you products a couple of weeks ago, but just talked with another supplier...” and then the man came on “Ow.. it is a pity. But you know, I can make to you that special price. I can sell to you for less than this company is actually doing.”
“Ok” said I. “But, you know. I contacted your company a mouth ago and I haven´t got any answer since then. I even tried to call them, but the number wasn´t working. It was just in a busy tom. So I decided another one. Sorry.”
“Oh man. You know e-mail address never works... and phone calls are complicated these days. Please, come on my office and I really can do some special to you.”
Well. Needless to say, I didn´t get in touch with him again and with his company. If I need some help, or a technical assistance, or complain about some mistake in the order delivered? I could not contact them by e-mail or phone... what would that be so? Telepathy?
I didn´t make any accordance with another company, I lied to him. Actually I did not need them anymore. But I thought it would be good show him that the costumer needs attention in the right time. I kept thinking after that in many things. One is that he would give me a special price which it would be less than others suppliers, what is to say is that he would probably loose a bit of money just to repair his fault. Or at least, make less profit. If he or his company had done the right thing, contact me at the time e showed their products and prices I would be so happy that even if they had a higher price, just because the attention I would make business with them.... in that occasion or in the future. Now in the next time, if I need it, I will really look for another one.

Man's Search for Meaning : Viktor Emil Frankl X Marketing Class

In order to participate in a seminary promoted by my university professor of marketing, I was requested to read this book called “Man's Search for Meaning” By Viktor Frankl. These book is a kind of book that deserves a profound thinking after reading it.
Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. This book is his account on the days being an inmate on concentration camps. Far from denouncing the atrocities that was made in these camps, frankl changed the perspective and wrote a kind of essay on how the events were perceived from the prisoners and how the prisoners handled with the overwhelming situation and with all the suffering that they were faced to live.
The author managed to show his point of view on existentialism, the struggle for surviving and how to live is always the only option. These points are the roots for the author´s logotherapy, which is considered the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy" (the first one is the Freud's psychoanalysis and the second one is the Adler's individual psychology).
Logotherapy is an existential analysis that brings forward the “will to meaning” and says that life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones and our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.
The author himself experienced this meaning while working in an extreme situation where he happened to think in his wife. He said he understood in that occasion what many thinkers and poets had proclaimed that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.
Full of emotion, this book is amazing. Despite the dark and heavy background, the book is a quite optimist account. The author´s position of not showing revenge thoughts give us a sense that we can change things and for changing the world we need stop looking at the other´s faults and start shape our thoughts and acts up to find meaning to our existence.
After reading the “Man's Search for Meaning” I was full of thoughts and ready to talk about them on my marketing class. I was thinking that it is quite hard to accept what happened and what men are capable to do with each other; that the worst is that even today after too much suffering there are many people in many places in the world passing through situations like that. I started to think how is meaningless many aspects of our reality and how there are so many things to be changed, to be transformed in our world. There are so many things to be done and first of all we need to know and understand ourselves; and find a positive meaning of our life; a meaning that could be match with the transformation of this reality in a better one.
For my disappointment, the discussion in our class was poor. We didn´t talk about the meaning of life or other philosophic issue. We didn´t even talk about our position or about our role in the society. We didn´t talk about the weakness of the system or the necessity of thinking better on our acts. We talked about marketing, about branding, about propaganda and how get position in the market to sell our products and make profit. What was supposed to be a great opportunity to have a good conversation, was in fact, a bored time spent together and a frustrated meeting.
We had a little brief on Second World War and about Nazism Propaganda. The professor explained how Hitler invented many tools on mass communications and through these tools he managed to make a whole nation to follow him in his politic vision. We didn´t get on human nature or others facts on History to understand what was going on. I believe that despite the fact we are grown and attending university, many people are still confused about many things on Second World War, and that would have been a good occasion to talk a little about it. But I have to say that not so many people were thinking like me in that moment.
We came on talking about some topics from the book, which the students were asked to write them down separately and then put all together to be read by some chosen ones in order to make the presentation of the topics more organized. Every single topic were presented to the class and then opened to be discussed. Every single topic had to be related with organizational environment and nothing more profound than it.
Well, actually it was my fault to believe that we could have some philosophic moment in an administration course. In addiction, we are going to the final laps of our graduation; this kind of feeling must have died some time ago, after the first year course.
I could say that I should have expected that, but the fact is that I feel myself a little bit strange for using this meaningful account in our so market directed discussion without feeling.