The limitations of the national security

When we talk about our privacy, many people tend to think –or like to think- that we live in an occidental world where free expression is secured and legitimized, but the thing is that’s not true. Few weeks ago, a young man called Edward Snowden, ex-agent of CIA –the most powerful agency of intelligence of the world-, had to find a place to hide and tell the world that the US have been collecting confidential information for years from the European Union by spying. He alerts all of us about the danger of the social networks when we provide information about ourselves, our location, our interests, etc. Privacy doesn’t exist. We are living in a paranoid world that is constantly looking for people who represent a threat to what has been called “national security”. By now, he is a menace for security of US, so he has to escape and hide, just like Julian Assange, creator of the polemic Wikileaks website, because in their intention of promote the importance of free thinking, they became figures that, until now, have been subject of controversy, mainly because powerful institutions that pursue them have transmitted through the media the need to catch them for endangering peace and security of worldwide. Could it be in fact that they fear that people get information? And that question brings a second one: What are they hiding so jealousy?

I think when a nation proclaims policies and laws, they must think about common wellbeing. It seems to be that’s not happening. Proclaim an alleged national security means that there are enemies out there and we have to be careful. But the enemy, in fact, doesn’t exist and there are many examples about this (Al Qaeda’s case is one of them). Snowden and Assange aren’t enemies of common people; they are enemies of the status quo, the system that those who occupy the seats of power have been concerned to legitimize from generation to generation.

Noam Chomsky makes this clear and he shows us how the media have contributed to legitimize the status quo from the beginning, using extremely basic mechanisms.

I put some video links below.

I hope you can comment this J

Have a nice weekend!

Snowden’s Interview in Hong Kong (2013): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuV6eFg3l04

Julian Assange in TED (2010): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXeRZHEr2T8

Noam Chomsky talks about mass media and control: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do8iu85yeik

10 strategies of manipulation by media: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQywx80gQp4

The ups and downs of indecision

I graduated from school in 2003. Ten years ago. Wow! When I say it, sounds like long time ago, but when I think about it, I feel that ten years are nothing (well, Gardel realized that 20 years are nothing, so I’m probably right).

When I finished school, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a teacher, so I did the PSU and I could go to the university I wanted: UMCE, as known as “Pedagógico”, among other nicknames. I began in 2004. After varied and interesting practical experiences in different educational institutions, I definitely left university. My main reason to do that was my deeply frustration and disappointment about teaching.  Teachers are intellectually mutilated and aggressively censored when they don’t want to fit to programs provided by the government, in their eagerness to train young women and men with reflexive and critical attitude about social reality.

Later, I started working in Movistar, where I remained for the next six years. I decided to go back to university in 2011, so I took some courses in pre-university, in order to prepare my retaking of PSU. At that moment, I was determined to study Psychology, mainly because I liked the area when I was studying Pedagogy. In a certain way, I think I still have the hope of being a contribution to the transformation of society, for the wellbeing of all its members.

The psychologists can create good instances of social interventions. In my case, I believe in a Psychology that may have a scientific development, because pure science, in its most basic intention, is the cradle of knowledge production. Obviously, scientific practice has been victim of distortions and it has been misused in different moments of human history. But this can also be modified if we take charge of what we are studying and we use it to let the people know how they are victims of social control. I think that an important challenge of our discipline today is to disseminate the information obtained from researches in a proper and massive way, not leave it in labs.

Once more, sorry for the extended post.

Have a great week! J