PIECES OF MY MIND

By Sandra Galeotti

First published online on April 4, 2010 at Scribd. Edition revised and complemented on May 20, 2010

“Pieces of my Mind” consists of short reflections on several subjects which are close to my heart,
such as technology, life sciences, moral dilemmas, politics, social issues, environmental challenges,
pets, music, great authors, relationships, philosophy and cultural diversity. You are invited to read
it in a random fashion, without following a sequence because it does not matter. I may be critical
sometimes but in general, the content is user-friendly and can be used as a sort of a promenade
through this human mind. I hope you enjoy!

I - Advertisements I am looking forward:

Time Machine
J. Verne & H.G. Wells Technologies Inc. is about to fulfill your dream of visiting the past
ages and watching history in the making. Meet the RewindHistory-2021, your portable time
machine. The safest way to visit the past without interfering with it or getting stuck there! This
outstanding temporal worm-hole technology allows you to plug your brain to the temporal
quantum field of your choice and witness history as it unfolds in a given period in the past.
RewindHistory-2021 comes with a user-friendly programmable anxiety-control system that allows
you to adjust the device to spare you from unbearable scenes of savagery and cruelty while it
monitors your blood pressure and cardiac rhythm. Exceedingly shocking scenes will be
automatically replaced by text. The product is licensed exclusively for adults and college students
and is child-proof. Be the first to know whether historians, paleontologists and archaeologists have
got it right!

Robotic Housecleaner
Meet Susie and Rosie, your new housecleaners! Polite, efficient and heavy-duty, these two
kind ladies never complain about wages or the extra working hours or about doing the windows,
provided you give them a daily fifteen minutes sunbath or plug them to an electric outlet
overnight! No, this is not a ruse! It’s just the most advanced Sun Kai Co. technology making your
life easier and more enjoyable! Susie can also cook and comes with a 10 Gyga Bytes memory card
for recipe storage. Both are water proof and fire resistant. Their special sensors allow perfect and
safe movements around furniture, people and pets. Voice recognition and speech options are
highly accurate and they may be selectively programmed to accept commands from specific
persons only. Two-storied houses may benefit from our special bases, designed for stairways.
II – Telecommunications

Internet and Mobiles

Internet, especially after the introduction of the broadband, has revolutionized
communications in recent years. I remember when the telex machine was still seen as a dinky
gizmo and now most people do not even know what it may possibly be. As millions around the
world, I use the Internet in my work daily, not only to send e-mail messages but also to search for
information and to access different data banks to collect material (e.g. scientific articles,
continuing education programs and so on). Moreover, VOIP and Skype have allowed cheaper ways
of communicating with customers and friends at a distance and to hold conference calls at almost
no cost. However, mobile phones are not my cup of tea because they are too invasive and
unsolicited SMS messages are really annoying, so if you cannot reach me at the office or home, do
not bother to call me on the mobile (it will be off, anyway).

III – Human Relationships:

Friends
Friends are the treasure of life. They don’t come in standard features though. Allow me to
share with you what I have found about friend specifications:

Amusement Friends – They love to make you laugh, have a good time, do things together.
Small talks, gossip, dinner parties, telling jokes, meeting for a coffee or going together to the
movies or the theater is what they are best at. But don’t count on them if you are going through a
tough phase… they tend to disappear…

One-way Friends – They always come to you when they are in trouble, need some sort of
support or are in want of a good listener. They admire your ability to discern through their mental
fog, helping them to think through their dilemmas. Sometimes, they genuinely wish your advice
but more often than not they expect you to just agree with them and show sympathy. However,
do not expect reciprocity. Seeking help is THEIR ROLE in this relationship – NOT YOURS - and your
own needs are the least of their concerns.

Friends of the Mind – These are really a delight to have around, even when your views
completely diverge. These are often not only bright people but also intellectually elegant and not
deprived of a fine sense of humor. Enticing conversations, mutual intellectual appreciation and
thought-provoking discussions are to be expected every time you get together. But remember,
this is the level where you two connect and it seldom goes beyond that - exceptions to the rule
considered.

Friends of the Soul – Usually you both function like mirrors, reflecting your best qualities
on each other. Sharing common ground is what you do best and you take great pleasure in this
reflexive exchange. Well, we all need a certain degree of narcissism, don’t we? Besides, empathy
is easier between individuals who can understand each other’s feelings and experiences. You feel
you’re not alone, after all! However, be aware of bias! Best advices seldom come from this
source.

Golden- Standard Friends – There is an invisible golden thread connecting your hearts,
beyond space-time. You love each other for what you are: virtues and vices. You may not often
see these friends. Actually, sometimes decades pass by before you meet again. It does not
matter: your mutual friendship is impervious to change by distance or time. You’re always there
for them as they are for you, come rain or come shine. They are to be especially treasured.

Remember to make the most of each kind of friend you have because they are all worthy
of your affection, but keep clearly in mind their functional specifications. It only hurts when you
don’t read the implied fine printing.

Marriage and Love Affairs

Here again the implied fine printing is of utmost importance. People almost never change,
so you’d better know what ticks you and your counter-part! Your motivations whether conscious
or not, will determine to whom you are attracted and vice versa. The above friendship specs are
also applicable here, but the road can be much bumpier and messier. Let us see what is at play:

Therapeutic Marriage (or Pseudo Twin-Souls Medication) – You have traumatic,

unresolved issues related to your mother and/or father image and an emotional/cognitive
baggage of experiences with the real people behind those images. This is usually a problem when
it comes to intimate relationships: you tend to attract and be attracted by the very same problems
you want to escape from or be “cured” of in the guise of another person. That’s what I call
“misery-exchange-relationships”. It never works. Once the initial fascination wears out (although
the sex is usually satisfactory … or really great!), off you go to a new round of the same with
another person, while trying to lick your more recent wounds. Try psychotherapy! It is less costly,
both emotionally and economically, and more effective. Cruel fact of life 1: two birds, each with
one broken wing, will never fly by being together.

Utilitarian Marriage – Strongly goal-oriented overachieving people tend to get into a

relationship as if it were a commercial transaction. They share common social, economical and/or
professional ambitions and try to make the most of such association, which is fine, if nothing
deeper or warmer is expected from one another. Bankruptcy or the physical impairment of one
partner usually marks the end of such commercial marriages. Cruel fact of life 2: you get what you
bargain for.

Opposite-pole Marriage – People who are or believe themselves to be too handsome, too
talented or too bright do love to be surrounded by those who don’t represent competition or
challenge to their beloved self-image; and people with a very low self-esteem do love to bath in
other people’s “light”. The former makes the latter feel “special” and the latter makes the former
feel safe and well-served. Both profit from the interaction up to a certain degree. Maybe this can
explain why handsome men often marry unattractive women, bright people marry mediocre
people, ugly (and rich) men marry bimbos, successful women marry losers, strong-willed ones
marry meek ones, and so on. (No further comments…). Cruel fact of life 3: when you see a flying
bird carrying another one, you know that a bird of prey has got its meal.

Crooked-Foot & Old-Slipper Marriage – Some long-lasting and seemingly “successful”

relationships are the result of uncomplaining resignation and sheer endurance. People simply
decide to keep going on, “in spite of”…, simply to save themselves from the troubles that might
arise out of the other options. Cruel fact of life 4: sometimes it is too frightful to leave the cage,
even if it is not a golden one.

Golden Marriage – They usually bring to the adult life a little (if any) unresolved issues
from childhood or have previously worked through most of their problems. At least one of them
has a very positive parental image and comes from a loving and supportive family. They tend to be
understanding and forthcoming with each other and continue to grow together (as independent
individuals) throughout their relationship. The bumps along the road don’t challenge their feelings
or sense of mutual commitment. Mutual appreciation and respect are the pace-maker of their life
together. Of course, there must be exceptions to this recipe… I strongly believe that some people
are able to overcome extremely adverse backgrounds and make a lemon pie out of the many
lemons life has thrown at them. Cruel fact of life 5: the odds of finding a golden relationship are
not much different from the odds of winning the Lotto alone.

Gautama Buddha said that the two main obstacles to Enlightenment are Selfishness and
the Guilt Complex. I guess this is also true concerning human relationships. Nevertheless, self-
knowledge and self-esteem are essential for them to work as well.

Family Dynamics
Apparently, genuinely harmonious relationships between siblings or between children and
parents are not a common feature in families, even in those families which are not dysfunctional
by definition. Why is it so? The modern explanation is that we work too much, have a tight daily
agenda and stressful life styles, always under all sorts of pressure. Quality time with children and
spouse tend to become one more item in the agenda, a sort of chore or duty to be fulfilled, one
more factor of stress. Modern rules are clear about what is expected from parenting: to provide
for family sustenance, housing, medical assistance, education (in the sense of schooling), to save
money for college, and “to make some memories”. Is that all? Does that make a good parent?
Does it suffice to create a happy, mentally healthy family? I don’t really know. Is there a room for
cooperation between children and parents and between the children themselves in that carrousel
of appointments and schedules to be met? Is there enough time for learning about recognition,
mutual acceptance and appreciation of individual differences? Is there room and time for teaching
and learning about limits and respect for each other? With everybody so busy (adults and
children), is there time enough to really know oneself and really know each other?
 Aren’t we just a bunch of people under one same roof, struggling to achieve external goals
and meet our schedules, without a chance to pause long enough to simply enjoy ourselves as a
family group (except perhaps during vacation time)? It seems that we are never really present but
always worrying about how to achieve short and long-term goals.

How can we tell apart our really essential needs from those false needs or desires imposed
upon us by cultural/social conditioning and commercial propaganda? If we understand “desire” as
the impulsive drive of the conditioned mind, it is easier to pose the right questions and find out
which desires are preventing us from recognizing and attending to our real needs as human beings
and the real needs of our children.

One of the most misunderstood aspects of Buddhism is the question of desire. Yes,
Buddha Gautama taught that desires are the cause of all suffering, and we can see why, when we
start realizing that desires usually are artificial replacements for real needs. Therefore, we
continue frustrated, anxious or afraid after such desires are fulfilled. But he also emphasized the
importance of recognizing and meeting our real needs, whether material whether spiritual. He
also said that a married person who takes proper care of his/her family and deals wisely with
money and wealth is more valuable than a beggar-monk who is proud of his spiritual renunciation
of worldly goods. I suppose that in this era of virtually supersizing everything, we all have lost
perspective of what really matters to promote happiness for ourselves and our families. Worse
still, we are misleading the next generations about their true priorities.

About Love
I’m pretty sure that most of us passes through life completely misguided about what love
can possibly be. Literature and dramaturgy have misled us into believing that love is a sort of blind,
irresistible force of attraction between two individuals that, more often than not, leads to tragedy,
disappointment and pain, with a few cases of “happily ever after…” A constellation o fantasies
and biological drives are clustered together around this ideal of “true love”, rising expectations,
triggering unconscious projections, wishful thinking and yearnings for a magical solution to our
own problems, low self esteem and sense of loneliness – “if only we met our soul mate”.
Well, “irresistible attraction” has more to do with the Major Histocompatibility Complex
(MHC), a gene family that regulates the presentation of cellular antigens to T cells (so the immune
system can verify if some alien organism has invaded those cells and start an immune response),
than with some mysterious “irresistible” attraction. It is purely physical: the more diverse the
genetic sequences of MHC between two individuals the greater the physical attraction, simply
because our genes tend to promote genetic diversity in the next generation – a very neat strategy
of survival of the species. The more diverse the MHC genes of the parents the more effective will
be the immune system of the children. It is all about natural selection and species best chances of
surviving and has nothing to do with “love”.
On the other hand, humans have highly social brains, another survival strategy that lies at
the base of our need for relationship with other individuals inside our gradually expanding social
group, in order to develop a healthy and well-structured brain throughout our childhood and
adolescence. Children whose parents are caring and compassionate have a better chance to
develop a well-equipped social brain than those whose parents are just “operational” (i.e. just
good providers, materially speaking). Hugs and kisses, solidarity and active guidance (meaning
boundaries) are proven to be essential ingredients for pituitary production of growth hormone
and those other pituitary-dependant hormones involved in children’s healthy physical
development and the structuring of a variety of neuronal systems in the brain. So we need a
network of relationships during our developmental phase and the adulthood life as well to keep us
functional and healthy. In this sense, we can say that love is essential for our species’ survival and
that positive emotions are the glue of a healthy social community. Conversely, children growing in
stressful contexts (social or family violence, negligence, abuse) tend to suffer deleterious adaptive
changes in their developing brains that will program them to deal with cruelty and survive only in a
violent world through violence itself. They usually present later in life the same disorders and
psychiatric syndromes that affect war veterans and adults exposed to chronic stress and fear
(depression, dystimia, mood swings, panic attacks, hyper-vigilance, aggressiveness and so on).
Therefore, we can say that love and solidarity are good survival strategies developed by
humans and other mammalian species, such as elephants, dolphins, whales and apes. In giving and
receiving love, care and solidarity we find gratifying rewards in terms of brain chemistry (and
reinforcement of healthy neuronal structures) whereas the opposite causes pain, stress, fear,
existential terrors (and progressive neuronal cell death and metabolic disorders).
Another evolutionary perk of the social human brain is our ability to communicate with
each other in many levels and through different sets of symbols. We communicate simultaneously
in two levels, the verbal and the non-verbal, which are mutually complementary and together
impart the whole meaning extracted from the interactions between two or more individuals.
Moreover, we are able to communicate and interpret our perceptions of “reality” through
different forms of symbolic language, such as science, philosophy, art and religion - such is our
need to reach each other and establish common grounds for social interaction and to find the
meaning of our existence. Sometimes I am left with the strong impression that, as individuals, we
are a sort of loose bunch of neuron cells waiting for our turn to be included in some specific
neuronal structure of a planetary brain which is still under embryonic development. Perhaps in
such inclusion lies the meaning of life that so many of us are seeking for. Perhaps the gratifying
sensation of being included in such neuronal planetary structures is what the mystics experience
as the state of bliss or universal love – perhaps.
Now, on a one-to-one basis, what we are looking for? “What is this thing called ‘love’?” I
do not really know. But I have experienced levels of affinity and deeper levels of communication
with some people than those interactions exclusively controlled by the gene-diversity-oriented
MHC. Sometimes, they came together (and it was great!), but more often than not, they have
come in separate packages.
Who has best described those deeper levels of affinity and mutual communication for me
was C. G. Jung. He once said in an interview that “Love is an invisible (and unbreakable, I must
add) golden thread that links two hearts beyond space and time.” You read each other’s mind and
soul effortlessly – no blurred perceptions there, no misery-exchange dynamics - just deep mutual
understanding, appreciation and honest acceptance of what you both are (virtues and flaws
included). Now, I’m convinced that when such Golden Threads happen without MHC playing an
additional role, we find wonderful friends, true brothers and sisters of the soul (or psyche). And
when MHC also plays a role, we may find one of the many possible loves of our lives. Yes, many.
The Golden Thread plus MHC situation is not limited by or circumscribed to a single experience in
life. If you are lucky enough, you may bump into more than one GT+MHC situation - hopefully not
simultaneously (because it would be excruciatingly painful to choose - during the course of your
life. The important and richest aspect of such experiences is that such Golden Threads (plus or
minus MHC) transcend death, time and distance. You don’t stop loving those who have died or
those that life has sent away from you. You will always love them and they will always love you.
You are never alone (and I’m quite sure that there is no such thing as one-way-love – another
misguided concept about love).
Perhaps Golden Threads (with and without MHC) are the stuff that holds the embryonic
planetary brain together as it evolves and grows towards maturation. Perhaps we are just complex
organelles of an embryo in development in the womb of a galaxy - perhaps.
Nevertheless, I am certain that we could do a lot better as a species if we only took into
consideration in our daily relationships a simple Golden Rule: Do no harm, be as harmless as
possible to others and give natural selection a better chance by being a caring, loving and more
compassionate person towards both yourself and your neighbors, family and friends.

IV - Ethical Dilemmas
I believe that the golden rule here continues to be Do no harm. Is it possible? Can we,
humans, be harmless? At least, we should try to be mostly harmless. Almost every human culture
(if not all), including our Western cultures, seem to be not only harmful to a greater or lesser
degree, but more often than not, they are highly psycho-pathogenic. Our creative and destructive
powers are apparently endless. There is a “reverse anthropology” analysis of the Western culture
that everyone should read: “Das Papalag” or “O Papalagui” or “Papalagis”. Unfortunately, it seems
that it was not published in English, although I am quite sure it was also published in Italian. Try
the Scribd!

Moral and Ethics

Ethical and moral issues are really tough to discuss, since so much emotional, religious and
ideological content charges such debates. However, there is a curious real story I would like to tell
about the diversity of culturally-driven moral perceptions. In the late XIX century, Swami
Vivekananda was travelling across Tibet when a blizzard forced him to seek shelter in a house by
the road. The Tibetan family kindly took him in and during three days he could not stop being
scandalized by their family structure. The woman was married to three men. She was the the
family head and bread winner while the men took care of the children and did the household
chores. When the storm ceased, he thanked them for their hospitality, called the three men apart
and asked, “How can you three share a single wife?” The men looked surprised and shocked and
asked him: “Haven’t you as a monk made a renunciation vow?” ‘Yes, of course”, Vivekananda
replied. “So”, asked one of the men, “how can you be so selfish as to want a wife only for
yourself?” I leave you to your own conclusions…
Old-Fashioned Moral Principles & Ethics
There is a current tendency among parents to mistake instruction by education. Education
is not the responsibility of schools and cannot be a substitute for those values one can only
acquire through family and parental living examples and active guidance. Moral and ethical
formation is the inalienable responsibility of parents, grand-parents or of responsible adult
guardians, being more effective when it is imparted by both living examples and by teaching the
young to discern values and exercise compassion. Nevertheless, it is an active learning that
requires active teaching.
When one learns that is no such thing as freedom without responsibility, rights without
duties, individual liberties without respect and appreciation for ethnical and cultural diversity and
self-respect without respect for others, the seeds of a humane and morally well-equipped human
character find a good soil for growth.
My great-grand parents taught my grand-parents, who taught my parents, who taught
their children the following:
 Your rights end where the rights of others begin.
 If you do not learn independent thinking, how to ask questions and investigate all aspects
of issues, you are bound to be biased or worse, to be manipulated by others.
 Learn and understand the mechanisms and the power of propaganda (religious, cultural,
political, commercial) – not to use it to mislead others but to guard yourself against being
misled.
 Always be faithful to your own conscience. It is better to make honest mistakes by yourself
- and to learn from them - than to be wronged by your fear of rejection by your peers.
 When you give your word, it is not yours anymore to take it back.
 Life is a never-ending process of learning and self-transformation – when you stop it, you
die inside.
 Music and all forms of beauty’s expression are fodder for the soul.
 Your degree of compassion and empathy towards children, old people and animals speaks
of the dimensions of your own heart.
 Cooperation is better than competition; but if you need to compete do it against your own
limitations.

The Trouble with UN May Be…

Carl G. Jung once said that when you put together the most brilliant minds of the world in
the same room, the average IQ tends to decrease as the number of people in the room increases.
He estimated that after 100 geniuses get together, the resulting average IQ is that of an alligator.
The reason for this, according to Jung, is the primitive emotions underlying the psyche of all
human beings, including the most brilliant ones (e.g., unresolved complexes, unconscious fears,
personal insecurities, vanities, etc) which are triggered in the unconscious mind of individuals in a
crowd. Hitler and Mao must have known this fact… It’s much easier to manipulate individuals in a
crowd than in isolation.
 Assuming that the people in the United Nations are indeed endowed with brilliant minds,
perhaps the above-described phenomenon might be as well at the root of the inefficacy of the UN
in fulfilling its purpose: the pacific resolution of conflicts among nations. It also may explain why
the most successful diplomatic negotiations usually happen when bilateral negotiations, with two
or three able diplomats from two mediating nations are involved in the process. On the other
hand, diplomacy usually fails when one of the contenders is a nation led by a tyrant with
belligerent dreams of territorial conquest or ideological domination.

V – Social Issues

Government Handouts
Demographic explosion among the poorest segments of the Brazilian population is at the
core of the country’s main problems. Leftist politicians and religious groups have boycotted all
past and present efforts to teach and promote family planning through the teaching and provision
of contraceptive medication to the population. Consequently, a rapid growth of birth rates has
occurred among the dispossessed in the last four decades. Mass migrations of poor families from
the country to bigger cities, resulted in the formation of slums, private property invasions and
increasing urban violence, especially in cities with a significant industrial and commercial infra-
structure. Housing for the poor became a challenge for many city administrators and some came
up with palliative solutions, such as the construction of clusters of apartment buildings, which are
freely given to dispossessed families. These buildings are usually four/five-storied structures (no
elevators) containing the basic necessary amenities, such as running water, electricity, and
garbage collection services. Playgrounds and elementary schools are built inside many of these
complexes.
However, professional training for the adults remains overlooked. Therefore, there is a
general tendency in this country towards the perpetuation of poverty through government
handouts, since education and professional training is not provided for needy adults, which
doubtless is beneficial for those political parties and religious groups that feed on human misery,
ignorance and despair.

Humans & Environment

According to scientists, the human demographic explosion of the last two centuries is the
main cause underlying present mass extinction of species, observed in every continent. Although
mass extinctions had also occurred in past periods of geological upheaval, mounting evidence
indicate that mankind is not to be excused for the present one. Overpopulation and reckless
agricultural and industrial practices have been causing the extinction of at least one species
everyday for the last hundred-fifty years. Unsustainable deforestation is devastating entire
ecosystems in Brazil, China, Southeast Asia and Africa to name a few. The rate of plant and animal
species yet unknown to science that disappear every year in the Amazon forest for instance, is
estimated in three digits. Greenhouse gases emitted from man-made rural fires in Brazil is
responsible for 25% of annual global emissions of carbon dioxide. Greedy, corrupt and/or narrow-
minded politicians and businessmen are at the root of the global failure in dealing with the
problem effectively.
In addition, there is a general tendency to assume that global warming means a straight
forward elevation of global temperatures leading to hotter summers and milder winters. It is not
so. The present severe winter in the north hemisphere and widespread excessive precipitations
and floods in the south bear the fingerprint of global warming. In fact, that term refers to the
increase of temperature on the surface of oceans due to the greenhouse effect, which eventually
leads to a slowdown of warm water currents travelling from the tropics to both the Arctic and
Antarctic regions, where those streams cool down and sink, thus returning to the equatorial
region. These warm currents are the cause of mild winter seasons in both north and south regions
and sub-tropical temperate climate. As they slowdown, glaciers melt, salinity of the surrounding
water is changed and climate patterns are altered everywhere, bringing forth more extreme
temperatures in both summer and winter time. As climate is a highly complex and dynamic
phenomenon, conflicting interests always find a way to feed controversy and discredit in the
public eye towards decades of methodical research and registry of data; and of course, the recent
IPCC’s “E-mail Gate” has given a lot of ammunition to such groups.

Endemic Corruption
Fleecing is the national sport regularly practiced by the Brazilian government. When
health care and social security is concerned, this is truer than never. Brazilian citizens pay twenty
percent of their salaries just for social security and public health care. They also pay between
twenty-five and forty-five percent of income taxes plus an array of indirect taxes which are
incorporated into retail prices of any possible product or service. However, the public health
service is appalling and those who can afford (i.e., forty-five percent of the population), also pay a
private health insurance. Therefore, we have fifty-five percent of the population literally dying
while waiting for assistance for months in a row. Public hospitals are bankrupted because some
politicians and their accomplices tunnel the budget allocated for public health care to other
projects or directly to their Swiss bank accounts. Statistics have being manipulated by
governmental agencies for decades, to throw a curtain of smoke around this inhumane situation.

May Geography Be a Factor as Well?

Both Brazil and the United States have received a wide spectrum of ethnic immigration.
However, one aspect in which they sharply differ is the degree and speed of newcomers’
integration. In Brazil integration seems to occur naturally, probably due to the Brazilian´s friendly
disposition towards foreigners and curiosity about other cultures and customs. Immigrants rapidly
adopt many of our customs without losing their cultural identity. Although they network with
many Brazilians who share a common origin with them, they also make friends with other
ethnicities and even become business partners or get into cross-cultural marriages. I used to buy
clothes at a shop in São Paulo City owned by a Palestinian and an Israeli. When I told two
American Jewish women about them, they could not believe me. While living in the U.S.A., I have
noticed that integration is more difficult there, in spite of so many official programs to foster legal
immigrant’s integration.
Our Daily Stress
Stress is the malady of modern societies. Besides the stressful events that eventually visit
everybody’s life (personal losses, unemployment, etc), this generation is also overwhelmed by too
much work or study and tight schedules. Therefore, stress has really become an endemic plague
and a public-health issue. We all need to learn how to relax and better manage our schedules in
order to prevent the deleterious effects of chronic stress upon our physical and mental health.
Research into the biochemistry of stress suggests that it is in the root of many diseases, such as
blood hypertension, cardiovascular conditions, gastritis, eating disorders and psychological
problems. Nutritionists and physicians may help us to adopt a healthier diet aiming to supplement
some essential amino acids and vitamins to protect our cells against the poisonous biochemistry of
stress. However, these measures are much more effective when associated with regular physical
exercises, yoga, Pilates or daily meditation and a change in our attitude towards life. Rethinking
our priorities might have a very positive effect in achieving a more balanced and satisfactory life.

Free Market???
Brazil is supposed to have a free market economic system. However, that is not
completely true, since our leftist federal government loves to interfere with free enterprising by
passing counterproductive pieces of legislation. The last “pearl”, is a recent Presidential Act,
making mandatory to all companies to have five percent of all decision-making positions occupied
by young people, who has just finished college!
Brazil has a strong industrial and commercial infrastructure, a rather strong internal
market, a highly efficient and modern banking structure and an advanced technological know-how
in many areas. Moreover, besides being almost self-sufficient in oil (about 95% of our internal
demand is extracted and refined here), Brazil is a big producer of iron, lead, manganese, and
grains. However, abusive and overlapping taxation of the same goods and services makes for our
poor competitiveness in the international markets. We are the world champions when it comes to
taxing companies, including the small businesses (which are responsible for 73% of all
employments in the country), which is a hindrance for better wages and more employment.
Furthermore, the average Brazilian citizen works six months, every year, just to pay the cascade of
tax and governmental fees!

Country and Cities

The migration of rural population to cities is not a new phenomenon since it started with
the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century in Europe and in the early twentieth century in
Brazil and the USA. In Brazil, the first city to attract rural immigrants was Sao Paulo, which became
the biggest industrial and financial pole in South America in the early nineteen fifties. Lacking an
initial plan of urban development, the city grew most randomly, with residential areas spreading
around industrial ones, airports and railway stations. Air and river pollution, insufficient public
transport services and huge traffic jams are to this day unsolved issues, despite the numerous
administrative measures taken throughout the decades to tackle these problems. The most
challenging factor is that the citiy/ cannot keep up with the annual rate of population growth,
which includes over 300,000 new immigrants only into the São Paulo metropolitan area. Cities
should be entitled to refuse new migrations when enough is enough. After all, the federal
government collects and holds a big chunk of all those taxes collected from the Brazilian cities’
private sector.

The Evils of Appeasement

Churchill played a crucial and pivotal role in one of the darkest moments in the history of
modern mankind, the World War II. After the appeasing diplomacy of his predecessor, Neville
Chamberlain, who gave Hitler reason to believe that the United Kingdom was vulnerable and
weak, Poland was invaded by the German army. Upon Chamberlain’s renunciation, Winston
Churchill was sworn in as Prime Minister in 1940.
Soon after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Hitler ordered in 1940 a series of
massive airborne attack on London, Manchester, bombing all civilian and military ports and air-
bases in the British Isles, which continued through 1941. The UK was put to its knees and many
believed that land invasion by Germany was inevitable. Notwithstanding the dire situation,
Churchill was driven by an iron will and strategic vision not easily found in any generation among
politicians. His inspirational speeches were a source of moral strength to the afflicted civil
population and to the combatant forces. Under his leadership, alliances were built and the
resources of the British Empire around the World were mobilized, diplomatic conundrums with
several hesitating nations were overcome. In 1941, he succeeded in putting together the Grand
Alliance, bringing the USA and the Soviet Union together in the effort of war against the Nazis. He
not only saved Britain but was pivotal in every important decision that finally led to the defeat of
Nazism and Fascism in Europe, the Middle East, and North of Africa.
I guess it was Thomas Jefferson that once said that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed
from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” I fully agree. History shows that making
concessions to potential enemies who have no inclination for peace has never worked. Omissions
and misguided appeasing diplomacy are at the root of so many crimes against humanity and even
the destruction of entire past civilizations. Unfortunately, it seems that Europeans in general and
self-deluded radical pacifists everywhere will never learn from their past mistakes. I hope we may
have another Churchill at hand when the contemporary tyrants make havoc of the Western World.

Historical Butchers
There is one aspect of the human mind that I will never understand, the admiration for
tyrants and egomaniac conquerors, such as Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Genghis Khan and Alexander,
(the maniac Greek that people and historians like to call “the Great”), to mention just a few.
These butchers waged wars in complete disregard for the lives and well-being of their own people
- just to achieve personal notoriety, political power and new territories - and mostly against
weaker and defenseless nations which did not represent a menace to them. According to modern
international laws, they would have all been indicted as war criminals and criminals against
humanity if they were alive today. However they are still admired and praised in history books and
by many modern authors and I keep wandering, why? Is the ability to mislead entire populations
into barbaric brutality and fanaticism a human virtue to be praised and cultivated?
Religious Butchers and Zealots
Crusades Popes such as Urban III, Honorius II and Innocent III and the Abbot Bernard de
Clairvaux as well as inquisitors such as Pope Lucius III and the Dominican priest Tomás de
Torquemada, should be historically classified as criminals against humanity due to the horrors they
incited, promoted and condoned: genocide, mass massacres, torture and rape. As far as the
Crusaders are concerned, even cannibalism of babies was practiced by the Christian mobs both in
Damascus and Jerusalem. Almost 900 years of heinous crimes against women, children and men
as well as against scientists and humanist philosophers are the historical and spiritual burden of
both Catholicism and other Christian sects. The same is true of contemporary Islam and its hate-
monger leaders among Shiites, Ullemahs, Wahabs and the Taliban. Like their Christian
predecessors, the contemporary zealots seems to believe that they are entitled by some divine
power to commit all kinds of atrocities against innocent people, whether in the non-Muslim
nations whether against their own people. In the light of both Jesus’ and Muhammad’s teachings
such crimes are inexcusable and unjustifiable. It seems to me that the so-called “silent majority”
are indeed guilt of accessory to crime through omission both in the past centuries and today. No
religion should be used as an excuse to incite hate, prejudice and violence. An old Muslim saying
adviced: “Judge not a religion by the men who declare to profess it but judge men by their own
religion.”

VI – Favorite Authors, Artists & Movies

Missing Douglas Adams

One of the most creative minds of our times left this planet for good in May 2001. Douglas
Adams, born on 11 March 1952, first became a bestselling author with the famous series “The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, which was originally written as a radio play for the BBC network,
in 1978. He was survived by his beloved daughter Polly, his wife Jane and Janet Thrift Douglas, his
mother. Endowed with a brilliant and intuitive mind, an enthusiastic hedonist approach to life and
a fine grasp of satirical critique, Douglas Adams was not only a great writer but also one who
approached writing as a form of sculptural art. His knowledge of quantum physics, computer
science and robotics, combined with his irreverent analysis of our paradigmatic premises,
produced the right recipe for his literary success as a science fiction author. Douglas’ only non-
fiction book “Last Chance to See” is an endearing collection of reflections about endangered
species. His fans around the world will never forget him and I keep wondering about what else he
could have delivered if he was still alive.

Monet
I share with Claude Monet, my favorite impressionist painter, a fascination for light
nuances and their effect on landscape and objects. His paintings impart an intimate atmosphere, a
sense of enchantment and mystery. These qualities are well expressed in the series of paintings he
named "Essai de figure en plein air" in which women figures are shown in bucolic sceneries, with
different light effects. The characteristic patchy strokes of impressionist technique assume a
delicate and subtle touch with Monet, even when he experiments with ever changing natural light
upon the same scene. The series "Bassin aux nymphéas", illustrates his untiring endeavor to
capture on each new canvas every possible light effect upon a water-lily pond under a Japanese
bridge. In some of these canvases, daylight reveals the bright colors of flowers and sky reflections
on water while in others it highlights the shades of green.

Braveheart
"Scotland shall rise again". “Braveheart" revisits the historical struggle of the Scots for
freedom, in the skin of their hero William Wallace, in one of the most beautiful sceneries ever.
Pungent and inspiring, this film has become a classic. Mel Gibson, the director and leading actor of
“Braveheart", transports the audience to a moment in history of both great cruelty and great
human generosity. Gibson casted local actors for most of the roles and the spirit of the old Celtic
warriors shine through them. As a boy, Wallace sees his father being murdered by the English and
leaves the land in the company of an uncle. He returns as a young man to find the clans' chieftains
divided against each other and submissive to the English Crown while the people are oppressed
and humiliated by the "prima note" rights, by which the noble Englishmen were entitled to take
local brides to their beds on their wedding night.
Intertwining intrigue, conspiracy, humor and romance, the story shows Wallace falling in
love, his secret marriage to avoid the "prima note" and his terrible loss. Wallace then seeks solace
in rallying the clans against the English, striving to free Scotland and to crown young Robert de
Bruce his king. The score is utterly splendid and the battle scenes tell of bravery mixed with the
cunning Celtic sense of humor in the face of impending disaster. Mel Gibson struck gold with Brave
Heart and will be seen in a totally different light from then on, whether as an actor or as a director.
Faithful to the old Celtic humor, on September 11, 1997, the “Yes Yes” plebiscite day that has
determined Scotland’s autonomy, a large statue of William Wallace was inaugurated in Sterling –
showing Mel Gibson’s face…

Lewis Thomas
A medical doctor and a life-sciences investigator, Lewis Thomas had the rare gift of
producing insightful essays in which scientific information and philosophical reflections were
combined into an almost poetic style of writing. With the elegance and serenity of a clear mind, he
leads the reader through one ever widening mental scenery where common sense, humility and
true appreciation of our place in the chain of biological evolution gradually unfold. He has
conquered my heart and mind in the seventies with “The Lives of a Cell”, followed by “The Medusa
and the Snail”. But my favorite and regularly revisited work is “The Fragile Species”. The latter has
given me a deeper appreciation of the role of simple life forms (archea and bacteria) in the
creation of the atmospheric and environmental conditions that finally made possible our own
human existence. In the process, he also turned upside down the popular pseudo-Darwinian
dogma about the survival of the fittest and the strongest as the pivotal force behind evolution, in
favor of cooperation and symbiosis.
Carl Gustave Jung
Misunderstood by Freud’s followers, often detracted by those who have never actually
read his work, C.G. Jung stands in my mind as one of the most relevant cultural phenomenon of
the last century. Jung did for psychology what Darwin did for biology: he studied and compared
the several environments (both historical and pre-historical ones) that shaped the human psyche
and influenced on its evolution through time. Contrary to the general belief, Jung wasn’t a mystic.
As a physician, he considered the human psyche an epiphenomenon of the organism, whose
evolution and morphology was determined by the neuroendocrine activity, genetic traits and the
environment. He also noticed that the human psyche expresses itself and the impressions it has
collected in the world through many different forms of language or symbolic representations of
reality - such as myths, religion, arts, philosophy and sciences. In his endeavor to understand the
several evolutionary stages of the human psyche development, he not only carried out field-
research on anthropology in several continents, but also studied in depth compared mythology,
philosophy, history and religion, as well as fine arts, literature, modern political ideologies and the
contemporary societies. Jung also perceived that more than one kind of symbolic representation
of reality is always used by the psyche of any given individual and he saw the human psyche as a
complex, dynamic, creative and self-regulating ecosystem, instead of a mere mechanical
repository of traumas, repressed instincts and distorted memories.

Olavo de Carvalho
One of the most hated and ostracized Brazilian thinkers, Olavo de Carvalho, happens to be
as well one of the most lucid, brilliant and insightful contemporary philosophers worldwide. His
intellectual coherence and ability to dissect and expose the collective hypocrisy of his Brazilian
counterparts, who are deeply compromised with political ideologies beyond any honest reasoning,
has brought him more trouble than he has asked for, to the point of threatening his own life. He
leaves now in the United States. Nevertheless, he has many followers here and abroad and is still
published in Brazil. Unfortunately, the English translation of his texts in the Internet falls short of
what should be expected and contains many mistakes that hinder the imparting of the full
meaning of his thought. I hope the books translated into English don’t bear the same flaws. Here
are some of the titles in English, cited online: “The metaphysical foundations of the literary
genres”, “The Collective Imbecile”, “The Collective Imbecile II”, “The Garden of Afflictions”,
“Epicurus and Marx”, “Fritjof Capra & Antonio Gramsci”. Although I disagree with some of his
views based on Roman Catholic dogma, I deeply respect and appreciate his work – a beacon of
light in a new Dark Age.

E. F. Schumacher
Famous in the seventies for his insightful revision of the paradigmatic premises of modern
economics and related environmental issues in “Small is Beautiful”, Schumacher has really
touched my soul with another master piece, “A Guide for the Perplexed”. A precious incursion into
the epistemological problems of our modern culture and academic orientation, Schumacher
revisits the Neo-Platonists of the first century, Medieval humanists, Eastern Philosophy and
modern psychiatry as he methodically builds a clear vision of what we are missing in terms of a
more comprehensive perception of the meaning of life and the purpose of the knowledge
mankind has amassed in the last two centuries. “A Guide for the Perplexed” is an essential
exercise of discernment that confronts us with the eternal and universal principles and values
which define our humanity and whose loss turns us all into machines.

Alan Watts
Alan Watts’ work is a delight, an out-of-the-box philosophical and psychological excursion
from West to East and back, seasoned with humor, kindness and a pinch of irony. My favorite
definition of “ego” is his: “a chronic state of neuromuscular tension”. Among his many books, my
favorites are “Psychotherapy East & West”, “The Joyous Cosmology”, “The Wisdom of Insecurity”,
“This Is It” and “Tao the Watercourse Way”. You may not always agree with him but surely you
will enjoy the ride!

About Music
Perhaps one of the most beautiful expressions of the human nature, music is for sure the
most universal of all languages. You don’t have to speak German, French, Spanish or English to be
touched by the creations of Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Isaac Benitez or Gershwin. You don’t have
to be Afro-descendent to enjoy jazz, blues or samba; or Irish or Scott to be moved by Celtic songs
and rhythms or Indian to be enticed by Ravi Shankar’s compositions – you just have to be human.
Music is for sure a form of nutrition for the human soul and each style seems to contain
different nutrients, necessary for the enhancement of specific soul functions. Bach helped me to
understand mathematics and Plato; Liszt tells me about poetry; Debussy made with sounds what
Monet made with light.

You may say that I am naïve, but I still believe in that old triangle
of Plato’s Philosophy on the Intelligent Design:
Truth, Beauty and the Good

Kind Regards,
Sandra Galeotti
(Pieces of My Mind was written during the course of 2009/2010 as a personal journey that
has helped me to sort a lot of things out and do some soul-rescuing)