Opinion Sur
We wonder how in these tempestuous times the prophets of fear are far outnumbered by those who devote their efforts to building a better world; step by step, through trial and error, by learning, innovating, lending a hand. In spite of the ravens, criminals, hope swindlers, the mean-spirited, the appropriators of other ones’ bread, the determination to move forward persists; it outlives generations. It is a journey that goes back a long way; of ancestral caravans, face-lifted and defied by today’s accelerated pace, where paths are opened amid fatalisms, on one side, and voluntarisms, on the other one; with amazing breakthroughs in science and technology, enormously powerful engines, sophisticatedly organized in our complexity, flabbergasted at productivity, deranged in our own pace and goals: a vast cloud of dust from the world in motion. And the course? What was, what is, what will be the course?
Certainly, everyday activities matter; day by day showdowns occur and egos are projected; mouths are fed and the environment is abused; injustices are suffered and pains and joys are renewed; buds sprout, departing ones depart; hatred and love struggle. We have some compasses, yet they have different north; each one convinced that his is better, that his reason is “the” reason, that his view is “the” view.
Hence the importance of developing strategic thinking; permanently working new inputs to create by imagining what is to be created. Giving way to new referential utopias; those hybrids between what is desired and what is viable, between what is longed for and what is attainable. Utopias that shake themselves off the naiveties and the ill fame created by those who wish privileges and biases do not change; referential utopias that allow us to stand tall and scan today’s injustice and ignominious inequality. That is where we are up to; with our ear close to the ground and our eyes quite farther beyond.
In this issue of Opinión Sur we have taken some distance from the global crisis, the gossiping as well as the truths in the leaks that have shaken international diplomacy, the big geopolitical tugs-of-war, to focus on three very different closer issues: how to integrate a dimension of social and economic inclusion into public investments in infrastructure; what the law truly is and whom it serves; how children (who will eventually be parents) may help break spiraling family misunderstandings: we hope you find them interesting.
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Kind regards,
The Editors
