Category: WORD CHRONICLES

Keyword: ANTARCTICA | Words about frozen deserts

Photo by Kate Kloza (Australian Antarctic Division)
Antarctica actually means “not Arctic”. Not very original, true, but its designated name was already taken by the time this land was finally discovered. Terra Australis Incognita was a Latin expression literally meaning “Unknown South Land”. Since ancient times, it was believed that there was a land at the southernmost tip of the planet, but no one knew where it might be. During the colonial process, what is now Australia was first “discovered” by the Dutch, who named it as New Holland. Then came the British and they assumed this was the “unknown south land” our distant ancestors were looking for and, at the beginning of the 17th century, not long before the discovery of Antarctica, the English explorer Matthew Flinders thought “Terra Australis” was too long and that “Australia” sounded better. Australia is also known as “down under”, which conveys this idea of that land at the bottom of the planet.

So, when the true “terra australis” was found, they had to come up with a different name. “Arctic” comes from the Greek word arktikos, a reference to arktos, which means “bear”. In the old days (and even today, for those who are willing to skip GPS), people were guided by Polaris (the North Star), which indicates North for those located in the North Hemisphere. Polaris is a star right above the North Pole and, because of that, barely moves in the night sky. To find Polaris, one would only have to identify the constellation Ursa Minor (literally meaning Little Bear) and follow its tail. Therefore, as the Arctic was up in the north, near Polaris, then it was the land near the bear. The fact that the Arctic has polar bears, while Antarctica does not, may or may not be a coincidence.

Partly inside the Arctic Circle, there is Greenland, a huge island permanently covered by ice and with no trees. So, why is it called a land of green? Because it was, thousands of years ago, when the Vikings disembarked there. However, its true name is actually Kalaallit Nunaat, which means “the land of the Kalaallit”. The Kalaallit are the native Indigenous people of “Greenland”. They are Inuit, which means “people” (please note that “Eskimo” is a term European people used to use that is nowadays considered highly offensive). There are different tribes of Inuit. The Kalaallit are the ones from Greenland, or better yet Kalaallit Nunaat. There are also Inuit in Northern Canada and in Alaska. By the way, “Alaska” comes from the Aleut word alaxsxaq, which means “the object towards which the action of the sea is directed”. The Aleut are the Inuit of Alaska.

In the Arctic and in Antarctica there are no Indigenous people, but there are plenty of unique animals. Polar bears can only be found in the Arctic regions and penguins can only be found in cold regions in the southern hemisphere, especially in Antarctica. “Penguin” is a curious word… It comes from the Welsh words pen gwyn, meaning “head white”. In reality, it meant “great auk”, “auk” being a bird similar to the current penguins, but not related. Auks have become extinct in the 19th century. Back in the Arctic, narwhals are a type of whales perfectly adapted to these icy waters. Their name comes from Old Norse nāhvalr, a composition of the words nār and hvalr. This last word means “whale”, the first means “corpse” … but in the sense of having a colour similar to the one a corpse has. Another Arctic whale that was named according to its colour is the beluga. “Beluga” comes from the Russian word belyĭ, which means “white”.

Many other animals have adapted themselves to the extreme cold of the Poles. However, Antarctica, like Kalaallit Nunaat, was once green and warmer. In a continent roughly the size of Europe and Australia combined, there are high mountains like the Alps, glacier-carved valleys, flat plains and even an ocean. Researchers have recently succeeded in starting to figure all this out using technology (read the article “Landscape beneath Antarctica’s icy surface revealed in unprecedented detail”, from the link below). The problem for these researchers is that Antarctica’s landscape is covered by a thick ice sheet, just like Greenland. Ice sheets are similar to glaciers, but the former have a much greater extension. They consist of layers of snow that have not melted. Each layer of snow is compressed by the layers above and turns into a kind of ice-rock. As the snow keeps being added above, the snow-turned-ice-rock below moves slightly and very slowly. That is why glaciers carve valleys and ice sheets find their way to the ocean. Those high ice walls, typical images of Antarctica, are the edge of the ice sheet.

Researchers are studying ice sheets to understand how Antarctica is formed and how it will react to climate change. Essential for them are ships. Yet, these ships are not ordinary ships. They are icebreakers. Icebreaker ships are more resistant than a normal ship and have a special design in order to be able to cut the ice. Without this capacity, the ship may get trapped in the ice. That was what happened to Endurance, the famous ship of Captain Shackleton. Another famous Polar explorer ship is Fram. Fram went both to the Arctic and the Antarctica at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century and “lived” to tell the tale. This ship is now “parked” inside a museum, where we can get in and have an idea what it was like to travel inside it. Around it, there is plenty of information about its missions and about other missions during that time.

In the nutshell, there is a lot to discover about Antarctica, about the Arctic, and about Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland).

 
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Adventure vs Certainty

Photo by Mark Neal – Retrieved from Pexels
When the first mountaineers climbed the first high mountains, most people thought they were crazy (chances are, even today most people think that is insane), but they did it anyway. For outsiders, it was a great adventure: something daring and full of danger. For them, it was just something they had to do, a certainty in life: the mountain had to be climbed. They prepared as much as they could and went on their journey to reach the summit. Once there, they paused and came back down. Mission accomplished.

The word “adventure” comes from the French word aventure, which originally comes from the Latin word adevenire, meaning “to arrive”, as in arriving here from somewhere else. That was exactly what mountaineers did: they simply arrived at the top of the mountain coming from below. How the word’s meaning transformed itself to become “an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks” (Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary)? Well, maybe because back to those days, “arriving” somewhere was, in truth, overcoming many perils. The risk of being robbed or even killed was very high. Travelling was, indeed, a great adventure, every time. Not today, especially in developed countries. Security and certainty are something we take for granted so much that we get upset (or have the right to make complaints) when the trip does not go how it was advertised.

We often say that “life is an adventure”. The truth is we never know what may arrive. It is just like climbing a mountain, really. You can prepare and imagine everything that is going to happen and exactly how it is going to happen, and then suddenly there is a storm and everything changes. Arriving at your destination may seem harder, certainty less secure. No matter how well prepared you are, it may not be enough. We get used to life being sure and predictable, but it really is not. Not even Earth is that stable – hence climate change. Volcanos, earthquakes, floodings, avalanches, droughts, tornados, wildfires, can arrive at any moment and change the course of our lives. However, life can change with “ordinary events” like being fired from your job, having a baby, going on a business trip, meeting new people. Life is made of events that can have unexpected results and lead you to arrive at a different destination from the one you initially intended.

So, nowadays, “adventure” refers to something that is out of the norm. The norm is supposed to be certain and well-defined, whether in life, business, or leisure time. It is what society tells you it is and it is what you are supposed to do. This may change from country to country and, for sure, in different periods of time. For example, building and trying airplane prototypes was a great adventure until they found the right design. Now, airplanes have a norm and they are a certainty. Catching a train in some countries is a certainty: you just need to look at the timetable and the train will leave at the designated platform and time (with more or less delay). Yet, in some countries, catching a train is a true adventure: you never know when there will be one and, if you manage to catch one, you will never know when the train will arrive at its destination… or even if it changes destination mid-way!

If we do a search through the Internet for adventure, the results usually revolve around travelling to exotic places or extreme experiences. In reality, it is a commercial package: the idea is for you to pay for an endeavour only available for very few people, usually people with a lot of money. Sometimes, strangely, “adventure” is connected to “luxury”, which makes total sense in light of the business concept, but makes no sense to the pure concept of adventure. After all, “luxury” is something that is certain and adventure is something that is unpredictable. So, you pay for an adventure holiday and expect to have the full experience as advertised. What if you do not? For example, outdoor adventures may be dependent on the weather. You have one week to do your activity, but it might be cancelled for security reasons… Ironic. On the other hand, there are experiences that are supposed to be very predictable, but turn into an adventure when something goes wrong. A beach holiday can be transformed into a jungle expedition if it is raining all the time. Or you can stay inside the resort, playing board games… which may be a discovery by itself.

In a nutshell, certainty is an illusion and everything is an adventure because it always involves a risk. You may or may not arrive at the place you wanted to go. If you get there, your journey may or may not be as you thought it would be. What is certain is that you will get somewhere. So, live the adventure!

 
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Age is just a number. Confirm it with Odilon Martins, a rower who still trains daily and competes after 78 years. He is 96 and says his health comes from his sportive life. Check the report from Reuters.

 
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Ambassadors vs Lobbyists

The name says it all: lobbyists are people who linger at lobbies of law-making institutions waiting to meet lawmakers to pitch them something (check “The Origins of ‘Lobbyist’” on the link below). This practice began, on a regular basis, in the 19th century and it has been evolving ever since. Now, it is a recognized profession. The European Union has even created a way to officially interact with them, in the name of transparency. The idea is to give an opportunity for everyone to be heard. This means that environmental conservationists have the same opportunity as oil companies to influence lawmakers, for example. Except… oil companies have way more money and the possibility to provide more lucrative advantages. Is it equal? No, definitely not. Besides, in lobbying, the line between presenting arguments truthfully and presenting them using manipulative tactics is very thin. And manipulation usually wins.

Ambassador is a very old word, with an interesting evolution. The English word comes from the French word ambassadeur, which comes from the Italian word ambasciatore, which comes from the Latin word ambactus, meaning “servant” (at that time, servants were actually slaves). The first time the term was used was in the 14th century, when Europe was immersed in turmoil. Alliances were made and broken often, thus, kings needed to know what was going on in other countries. So, they would send “servants” to be their representatives. They had a limited scope to negotiate in the name of their king, being in constant contact to provide information and receive instructions. These ambassadors were sent in missions to different countries and could be called back or redirected to another country at any moment.

In reality, they were spies. As foreigners, they didn’t belong to any organization, but, as representatives of kings, they could access everywhere and talk to everyone. The information gathered could serve as leverage (or blackmail) in official negotiations. The ambassadors’ role was not to pitch anything, but to find ways to make their kings’ will prevail. It could be a kind of manipulation too, like lobbyists, although with a different focus: instead of defending a cause or the interests of a specific company or a specific industry, ambassadors defended a political view and the (economic) interests of a country.

Gradually, permanent embassies were built and steady diplomatic relationships between countries were established. The goal was still the same: defend the interests of their country and getting to know what was going on in that country (especially backstage). Of course, those embassies were also used by the secret services… unofficially, in most cases. Breaking diplomatic relationships is rare and it is usually mainly symbolic because it is important to stay present to achieve the goals mentioned. Over time, embassies’ duties were expanded and they became responsible to protect national citizens visiting or living in that foreign country.

Nowadays, ambassadors are definitely not servants (much less slaves). They are respected diplomats. Diplomat comes from the French word diplomatique, which comes from the Latin word diplomaticus, meaning “regarding official documents”. In other words, they are official agents. The term has expanded to other (diplomatic) domains, such as the United Nations. The UN has “Messengers of Peace”, “Goodwill Ambassadors”, and “Advocates”, famous people who champion a certain area. For example, Leonardo DiCaprio is the Messenger of Peace for Climate Change, Cate Blanchett is a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency, and Petra Nemcova is the UNDRR World Tsunami Awareness Advocate. Recently, Professor Brian Cox was appointed UN Champion of Space. Their role is to raise awareness and positively influence public opinion, taking advantage of their public image. Other organizations, such as non-governmental organizations, are following the example and appointing their own ambassadors. Some organizations have ambassadors, to raise awareness, and lobbyists, to press lawmakers.

Although these concepts are very well defined and distinct from one another, in practice they can be mixed up. Ambassadors may act as lobbyists and lobbyists can become ambassadors. Nevertheless, in both cases, corruption has a very fertile ground here to flourish. When lobbyists or ambassadors are championing a cause, the corruption factor may be minimized (but not entirely eliminated, unfortunately). Temptations are abundant and, in some areas, a lot of money is circulating. However, when they are championing a company or an industry, anything goes as long as there is a win. Is it fair? No, of course. Partly, this is the reason why climate change is being ignored, for example.

 
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Many of us want to be more environmentally and socially responsible, but we don’t know how. Well, you can start by following “The lazy person’s guide to saving the world”.

As Mahatma Gandhi said: “We but mirror the world. (…) If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.”

 
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Recognition vs Anonymity

© Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Clément Morin
© Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Clément Morin
In the film “The Wife”, Glenn Close plays the role of Joan, the wife of Joe (played by Jonathan Pryce). Although the action is cantered on the fact that Joe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the focus is on Joan. Once in Stockholm to receive the prize, Joe is drunken with all the attention he is receiving and constantly belittles his wife. She clearly does not like it, but endures in silence. Until she is approached by a journalist who wants to know if the rumours that her husband’s books were in fact written by her are true. She denies it, but everything that she has hidden deep down inside herself starts to surface. During a particularly heated fight, Joan throws in Joe’s face that she was the one who had won the Nobel Prize. Then, in a flashback, we learn that, after they got married, Joan would spend more and more time locked in the studio writing the books, strongly encouraged by Joe and, as a result, neglecting their son.

It is a great film, with a lot more to be appreciated, but the focus here is the undeserved fame obtained by exploring the work of someone who remains anonymous. It did not start like that. Joan wanted to be a writer, but soon she understood that she would never be published because she was a woman. So, writing in the name of her husband sounded a good deal: she would write and fulfil her dream of being published, and he would become a world acclaimed author as he aspired. The film is fictional, but could easily be a true story. Joan’s dilemma happens more than people think, even today. For example, the publisher of J.K. Rowling decided to ditch “Joanne” in the author’s name for fear that boys would not want to read a book written by a woman. Many years later, Rowling chose a male pseudonym (Robert Galbraith) to anonymously send the first manuscript of a crime series (the Cormoran Strike series).

The Nobel Prize in Literature is the most prestigious award in this domain. It is part of a set of awards that also includes Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Peace. In 1968, a new prize was added: the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Those original five awards were created by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist, in a will where he established exactly how the prizes should be awarded and which were the criteria. When he died, in 1896, scientific developments and inventions were heavily dependent on individual reputation. Researches and discoveries were made with a lot of dedication and it could take many years before there could be a breakthrough. Most of the time, scientists worked alone in their lab, without any assistant. Those who were recognised could more easily obtain funding and carry on with their experiments. Therefore, public recognition and a good reputation were paramount.

Science today moves quite differently. It is not about a sole scientist pursuing difficult advances after several failed experiments anymore. Now, there are teams of scientists working together and basing their work on scientific articles written by other scientists and on knowledge being developed in other departments and institutions. Thus, although scientific Nobel Prizes are awarded to individuals, each one is in fact supported by many other anonymous individuals working with him/her that make him/her shine: colleagues, assistants, students, admin people. In the case of Literature, editors, translators, advertisers, graphic designers, typographers, logistics personnel, book shoppers, and librarians turn the writer’s manuscript into a book distributed and made available to readers all over the world. For Peace laureates, there are all those who were directly or indirectly helped by them.

Anonymity can be an advantage: one is free to explore and do whatever they want. Recognition implies playing by the rules, working at the right place and on the right issues, duly accepted by the “committees” in power. For example, Galileo Galilei was the first to state that the Earth (and not the Sun) revolved around the Sun (and not around the Earth). This statement got him in a lot of trouble with the Inquisition and he was forced to retract. If the Nobel Prize had existed back then, he would probably never have received it. Einstein won the Nobel Prize, but not for his famous theory of relativity, which the Nobel Prize committee has always rejected (read the article “Nobel Prize: 7 facts we bet you didn’t know” on the link below). On the contrary, there were laureates who later proved themselves unworthy of the prize (read the article “Here are the most controversial Nobel Prize-winners ever” on the link below). And, of course, the worthiest person to win the Peace Prize was not given such an honour, despite being repeatedly nominated: Mahatma Gandhi.

The Nobel Prize follows the “rules” and prejudices of European culture, for good and for bad. Alfred Nobel was Swedish and the prizes are awarded by Swedish committees, except for the Peace Prize, which is awarded by a Norwegian committee. One of the “rules” of European culture is to respect the power in place. At the beginning of the 20th century, the power was in Europe, especially Central Europe. After World War II, the power was “transferred” to the USA. Therefore, it is not surprising that most prizes were awarded in the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Sweden, according to the World Population Review. Mahatma Gandhi was the one who led India’s fight for independence from the United Kingdom. Therefore, it would be highly improbable for him to win the prize… On the other hand, when Le Duc Tho, the Vietnamese diplomat who made the 1973 ceasefire deal with Henry Kissinger, was awarded with the Peace Prize, he refused. First, because it had been a ceasefire and not a peace deal (the war continued until 1975, proving him right). Second, the USA was the aggressor, therefore, not that peaceful.

Another feature of European culture is to be male-centred. According to the official website of The Nobel Prize, from the 1026 laureates, only 68 are women, which corresponds to 7%. Interestingly, 56% of those 68 women were awarded the Peace and the Literature prizes. Science decided to investigate the matter and wrote the article “One reason men often sweep the Nobels: few women nominees” (read it on the link below). Although these days there are many women who are scientists, published authors, and hold important positions in institutions related to peace, there are still very few nominations of women for the Nobel Prize. The rules were changed to address this problem, and women nominations doubled. Not the number of women laureates, though. Luckily, women are being recognized through other awards.

Unfortunately, women are used to remaining anonymous, whether they are willing or not. Vivian Maier chose to remain anonymous. Working as a nanny, she travelled the world, always with her camera hanging around her neck wherever she went. Despite never having had any formal training, she had learned the basics with a professional photographer. Then, throughout her life, she developed her style totally by herself. When John Maloof found her photos, she had just passed away. Since then, he has been tireless in finding all her photos, which are scattered in different places. Today, she is considered one of the best street pornographers of all time.

How many individuals remain anonymous and their amazing work never recognised? We will never know.

 
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In 1964, UNESCO launched a very ambitious project: to write the history of Africa by African historians and experts. Thirty-five years later, eight volumes were published in 12 languages. Recently, three new volumes were added. Read more about the General History of Africa here.

 
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Keyword: MAIL | Post vs Mail vs Email

Email (or better yet, electronic mail) has been with us for several decades now and one can say that today it is essential for both professional and personal purposes. It is useful to digitally send and receive messages and files to/from other people, and much quicker too. The “e”, from “electronic”, refers to the fact that these messages are sent using electronic means. The term “mail” was not chosen by chance, although it may have been an unconscious act. Although with different meanings and different language origins, “mail” in this context came from the French word malle, meaning “bag”. As the letters to be delivered were carried inside bags, soon the term was expanded to the letters themselves.

“Post” has basically the same meaning as “mail”, but “mail” is used in American English while “post” is chiefly used in British English. This term also comes from French: poste, which in this context means “station for post horses”. If nowadays cars have to go to petrol stations to refuel, in the past horses would have to rest and get fed at regular intervals. These “posts” were located in strategic positions to make sure the horses would have places to “refuel” or to be replaced. As the horse riders would carry the “letter bags”, these posts became known as “post offices”.

Therefore, in the old days, the letters were transported inside bags on horses. The person who rode the horse with the bags full of letters, or just messages written on a piece of paper (especially in war time, which was rather often), was called a “courier”. This word came from an older version of the French word courir, which means “to run”. Obviously, the messages had to reach their destination as fast as possible, thus, the horse riders would have to “run” from “post” to “post”. Nowadays “courier” is connected to diplomacy, drug traffic or contraband, espionage, and tourism.

The couriers would ride the horses at all speed to make the delivery as soon as possible. In Europe, at least, they used to carry a horn to warn the post offices that mail was arriving. That is why many postal services in different countries have horns in their logos. Sometimes, the couriers would deliver the messages or letter bag to another courier who was ready to go and just waiting for the first one to arrive. The horse would stop just long enough for the exchange to proceed and the second rider would depart at full speed as soon as he had the message or the letter bag with him. This has inspired the relay races in sport. The English idiom “don’t shoot the messenger” has its roots in couriers. In truth, it is not clear if messengers would be killed when delivering bad news, but the receivers would surely be infuriated.

However, the postal system as we know it was not invented in Europe, but in Persia. Royal roads were built especially for couriers, covering the entire empire. Tests were made to know the distance a horse could run before it collapsed and then post offices were built accordingly. At the time, only official mail was delivered, thus, there was no personal correspondence.

At the beginning, messages were pieces of papers that were relayed from hand to hand. Later, the postal system expanded to include personal correspondence. Messengers on horseback were replaced by mail coaches and postal service was paid by the receivers. As most of them weren’t willing to pay, a new solution had to be found. Hence, the stamps, which were pre-paid by the senders and allowed for the letters to be delivered in mailboxes. In emails, mailboxes are called inboxes (the incoming or arriving email). The courier, in the meantime, turned into a postman or mailman or mail carrier.

The pieces of paper became “letters”, a name that came from the Latin litterera. It meant letters from the alphabet, the way someone would write, a message sent to someone, or literature. Nowadays, the letters have turned into emails as most people communicate digitally. This has led Denmark’s postal service to decide to stop delivering letters at all, with consequences. However, parcels may be booming. The orders people make online on shopping websites and apps are sent via post service, thus giving mail carriers extra hours at certain times of the year, like Christmas.

Times are changing and mail as we know it may change dramatically. Yet, postal service has undergone many changes over thousands of years, adapting to the needs of each epoch. In a globalized world, the exchange of correspondence between people in different parts of the world is more important than ever, and also faster than ever thanks to technology. No one is expecting to send a courier on horseback to deliver a message between France and Australia… but thanks to technology a message can travel that distance in seconds (by its own!). On the other hand, some packages cannot be sent by email. Of course, today, instead of horses, we have vans, trains, boats, and aeroplanes.

 

Jazz, rock and other tunes

Any given music fan who studies languages may become curious about the origins of the names of the different types of music, like “jazz” and “rock”. Strange and intriguing names. Music is music regardless of its category, but most people need to organize everything in clear labels. After all, names are important to identify the music and, thus, the people who enjoy that specific genre. Indeed, music is much more than tunes, it can be a lifestyle. It is hard to find individuals who don’t like music and/or who don’t identify themselves with a specific genre. “Tell me what type of music you like to hear and I’ll tell you who you are…”

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Classical music doesn’t refer to “old” music, not least because there are currently good composers who still create classical music. Strictly speaking, classical music refers to the period between the second half of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. Until then, what is now considered classical music was in fact Western religious music. In other words, composers would create music to be played in churches and to praise the Lord. It’s no coincidence that composers like Bach are known for their religious pieces.

However, the “classic era” witnessed a change of the situation and composers like Mozart and Beethoven, with their major breakthroughs, paved the way for possibilities to be expanded. They have influenced musicians to this day. The following era was dominated by the introduction of the piano, which gave rise to big stars like Chopin. We could say that, at the end of the day, classical music is the Western evolution of human melodic composition.

FOLK MUSIC

Folk music is a very broad term that encompasses traditional music from all over the world. It is also known as “world music”, meaning music which is not English-related. In truth, each country has its own musical style with different categories. However, as they don’t usually reach international status, they are considered “folk”. This word comes from Old English and Old German, meaning “people”, as in “common people”. Therefore, folk music means that it is the music of common people (as opposed to classical music, for example).

BLUES

The blues is a musical folk genre originally sung by the Southern African-American, mostly slave descendants. It emerged in the second half of the 19th century to sing away the oppression and misery felt by them. The name comes from the expression blue devils, which refers to the feeling of melancholy and depression.

JAZZ

Jazz is a “child” of the blues, but with upbeat melodies. The true origin of the word is not clear, but it is believed it comes from unwritten (and unspeakable) slang. Besides the musical genre, “jazz” nowadays can mean enliven and “similar but unspecified things”. The music was designated as jazz unintentionally, but the name stuck.

COUNTRY MUSIC

If blues and jazz are considered “Black” music, country music can be considered “White” music, namely the music of white people living in rural areas. This musical folk genre was born around 1920 in the Southern USA and it sang the life of countryside people, especially using the harmonica and the banjo. Nashville is the capital of the State of Tennessee (USA) and it is also considered the capital of country music.

POP MUSIC

Pop is the abbreviation of “popular”, which is basically whatever is the most listened to at a given time. These types of songs tend to mix different genres and use key words, which is different from generation to generation. The melodies are simple enough to appeal to a large number of people and are created by using the technology available. It is believed that popular music was born with music hall shows, which were live musical shows performed in theatres during the Victoria time (in UK), with easy-to-follow songs. However, it was in the 1950s and in the USA that the term was broadly applied.

RHYTHM AND BLUES (R&B)

This name came directly from its roots (the blues) and the beat with which they were now played. In a time when Black and White people were segregated in the USA, R&B was the popular music of Black people. It was mostly played in cities and aimed to help escape the trouble times Black people were living.

A type of R&B for many, soul music aimed to strengthen the pride in belonging to that culture and it was based on blues and gospel. Gospel is a kind of religious music, which was adapted by Black people at the beginning of the 20th century to reflect their cultural heritage.

ROCK AND ROLL

Rock and roll (or rock ‘n’ roll) is a type of rock music, which, in turn, is a type of popular music. Probably, the term rock ‘n’ roll came first and, then, when it expanded, got its name abbreviated. Emerging in the 1950s in the USA, it was initially a mix of blues, jazz, and R&B, and was played by Black musicians. It is believed that the name came from an expression seamen used in the 17th century to describe the movement of boats. Just as jazz, this expression could have another meaning and, just as jazz, the name was unintentionally designated, but stuck.

Rock ‘n’ roll boomed when a white young man with a black voice, who played the guitar and had very characteristic dancing moves, came to the scene. His name was Elvis Presley and he dramatically changed the course of music in the USA. In the meantime, a group of young men from Liverpool, UK, did the same on the other side of the pond. Their name was The Beatles (which actually is the name of an insect). Rock was played in cities and soon became a way for young people to express themselves and rebel against what was established in society.

HEAVY METAL

Originally a rock sub genre, heavy metal became a genre of its own in the 1970s. It is not clear how the name came to be. The electronic guitar was a feature of rock music, but in heavy metal that sound was pushed to another level. Maybe it was due to this sound, maybe because the concept of “heavy metals” was in the air, no one knows. The fact is that this type of music characterized a generation and it was connected to a certain type of looks (men with long hair, black weird outfits and mean face). Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Kiss, AC/DC, Aerosmith, and Alice Cooper are some of the most famous groups of this genre.

PUNK MUSIC

The first time the word “punk” was written (as “puncke”) was in Shakespeare plays. At that time, it meant “female prostitute”. Centuries later, the word evolved to mean a kind of male prostitute. Some centuries later still, the term expanded and became a general insult for all kinds of minor criminals or similar. By the 1970s, it was used to designate a rock sub genre that was emerging and taking a path of its own. Punk music was characterized by its strong social criticism, reflecting the disillusion and lack of perspectives of the younger generation at the time.

DISCO MUSIC

Although disco music was around since the 1960s, it was only in the late 1970s that it boomed, mostly due to the famous film “Saturday Night Fever”, featuring John Travolta. It was a genre connected to nightclubs and its name came from the French word discotheque, the place where people went to dance at night. “Discos” were what DJs played for people to dance. Later, disco music became linked to the LGBTQ+ rights’ movement.

HIP-HOP

The name of this music genre has many stories. The most told one is that of a man who enlisted in the army and his friend told him he was hip-hop-hip-hop, imitating the soldiers’ marching. True or not, hip-hop was not just a musical genre, but a cultural movement that started in the South Bronx, New York City, USA, in the 1980s, mixing cultural influences from the Black community, the Caribbean community and the Latin community. It includes rap, break dancing, and graffiti.

ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC

This type of music used synthesizers and was created to make people dance all night long. Although there had been some experiences since the 1970s, it was only in the 1980s that it officially emerged. It includes sub genres, like “house” and “techno”. It is also connected to “rave parties”, where people would party to the sound of electronic music sometimes for several days. Drugs were known to be used in those parties to keep up the pace.

CONCLUSION

As we can see, the 20th century was very prolific in terms of discovering new musical genres. This is connected to the profound social changes that were undergoing at that time. People left the countryside to live in the cities, creating a whole new cultural scene. The segregation between Blacks and Whites in the USA was reflected in different musical genres that evolved in parallel. Underground movements gave rise to new styles. Old tunes were reinvented to match the new social realities and make use of new instruments. Will the 21st century keep up the pace, or all the genres are already discovered?

** YOUR WORDS AND IDEAS **

By Isabella Muir | On 12 June 2025 at 07:52
A fascinating summary of music genres, which leads me to think that there really is something out there for everyone! I can’t imagine a world without music and to paraphrase Shakespeare…’if music is the stuff of life, then thank goodness for it!’

By Words in Ideas | On 12 June 2025 at 23:11
Indeed!

Keyword: RELIGION | Telling stories through mythology

Ever since humans are humans, stories have been told as a way to convey wisdom while entertaining. Imagine a neolithic tribe, eating meat around a bonfire. “John hunted this mammoth this morning”, grown-ups would say to the youngest. “It was hard, but John managed to kill the animal and bring it to us”. This is pretty dull and it would not motivate the youngest to go hunting. So, they would have to make up an incredible story to leave them amazed and to grow their desire to join the exploration team. So, they would emphasize the perils and show how clever and strong John and his team had to be to beat the beast.

At some point, it was not enough to praise the qualities of the heroes. As a way to explain phenomena that seemed incomprehensible, storytellers would invent Gods and Goddesses that had supernatural powers, but, deep inside, were just like ordinary people: they were jealous, envious, vindictive. These stories would narrate how the world was created or the epic conflicts between them or between the worlds where they lived, like “heaven” and “the underworld”. There were tales of love and marriage between gods and between gods and humans. The “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” are among the most famous Greek mythology stories. The Trojan War was told by Homero in the first of these books.

Greek and Roman mythologies are very similar and sometimes are mixed up. They have common characters with different names. For example, Athena, the Goodness of wisdom, war, and handicraft, belongs to Greek mythology (hence the name of Greece’s capital). Her “equivalent” in Roman mythology is Minerva. The Gods and Goddesses of both these mythologies gave their names to months and planets. Mars, the God of war in Roman mythology (Ares in Greek mythology, who was Athena’s brother), is now a planet and a month. The Roman Venus / the Greek Aphrodite was the Goddess of love and beauty and many men would fall in love with her. She now has a planet named after her. Apollo (both in Greek and Roman mythologies), the God many women admire because he was considered the most beautiful of them all, was the God of the sun, healing, archery, music, and prophecy. He has nothing named after him.

Norse mythology was the ground of Vikings’ religion. Thor, Odin, and Loki are characters of this mythology. Thor is Odin’s son and he has a magical hammer, which makes him very powerful. Loki is his faithful companion, but he is very mischievous and is the father of Thor’s fatal enemy, who will kill and be killed by Thor in the end of the world (the Ragnarök). As in the case of the previously mentioned mythologies, relationships here are complicated and confused.

In Asia, mythological tales have many animals and dragons, especially in China. Dragons are benevolent creatures, protecting the people against all kinds of dangers. They are important for agriculture, as they can control the weather and help farmers with their crops, and are tokens of fortune and good luck. It is said that China was founded when the emperor at the time connected himself telepathically with a dragon to re-established peace and prosperity to the country.

Mythological stories were created to be believed. They explained why the world is as it is. However, those explanations had to portrait Gods and Goddesses as human beings, with the same good and bad feelings, so people could relate to them and understand what was being conveyed. For example, thunder was Zeus’ or Thor’s doing. People would imagine individuals like themselves up in the sky throwing lightning bolts down to earth for whatever reason. The God of the Seas was short-tempered because the sea was unpredictable. They also had to include love and marriage, war and conflicts, hunting and fishing as these were daily events of everyone’s lives.

Today’s fictional stories are not mythologies. They aim to entertain and not to provide an explanation for unknown phenomena (we have science for that now). Some stories aim to raise awareness of social problems, make us see situations in a different perspective. There is a trend for fictional stories to replicate reality and for writers to do extensive research to get it right. One of the “rules” is that writers should only write about what they know. Therefore, no writing about God, no writing about crime (unless you are a criminal), no writing about parallel universes. In a nutshell: no room for wild imagination.

Epic stories are old, but they still fascinate us. They used to be connected to a religion, hence the characters being Gods. Yet, it was more than that. They would transform our reality into something exotic and exciting. But they would also convey precious lessons, as, for example, that we all have a weak point (Achilles’ was his heel) and we all need friends and allies to succeed (Frodo couldn’t save Middle Earth by himself).

 

** YOUR WORDS AND IDEAS **

By Isabella Muir | On 19 May 2025 at 09:25
Your post has provided a wonderful journey through mythology with imagination at its heart. It seems to me that everyone needs something ‘other’ to take themselves out of their day-to-day life, whether that a belief in the divine, or a chance to join Frodo on his magical journey. Through our imagination we can travel far and wide without ever leaving our comfortable chair!

By Words in Ideas | On 20 May 2025 at 16:18
Very well said!

 

Keyword: RELIGION | God or no God, is that the question?

God is a supreme being that is above all other beings. Religion is a system that sets the rules for worshipping God. It is possible to believe in God and not follow a religion such as it is possible to follow a religion without really believing in God. Religions are social spaces that give people a place of belonging and an identity in society. Being part of such a community and following its rituals bring a sense of security and stability that is important for mental well-being.

Although nationality and religion are two separate concepts, religion is so deepened and entangled in a country’s identity that many people think religion is part of the national identity. However, even in religious countries, there are nationals who choose a different religion. This is the reason why Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that people have the right of freedom of religion, including change of religion.

Before there were states with full sovereignty, people belonged to borderless communities, for example, tribes or clans. Some of these communities were bonded by blood, which was strong enough to keep the community together. Family is still very important nowadays and loyalty to the family is deemed paramount. Yet, people sometimes would change families due to marriage, due to orphanage (they would be adopted by a different family), or due to some other reason. Besides, different family members could have different ideas about the future of the community.

Religion was (and it is in some cases) the glue that would keep the community together, especially in the case of communities not bonded by blood. In a time when science was not very developed, religion gave the answers; when there were no therapists, religion provided mental support; when there was no humanitarian aid, religion helped people in need. In return, religion would demand loyalty and exclusivity, exercising its power by making people believe in dogmas, making threats and even terrorizing them. If someone would “sin”, God would punish him/her, religion would state. If someone would neglect the Church, God would destroy him/her crops. And if someone would change religion, he/she would be cursed forever.

Ritual ceremonies are designed to anchor believers to the Faith. Besides having a social component that helps people bond with each other, rituals are important to keep people calm and stable, encouraging them to face and overcome difficulties and challenges. For example, praying is a balsamic action to avoid despair, panic, and the feeling of powerlessness. There are also ceremonies of initiation and milestone achievements, providing a sense of purpose and evolution.

In the name of religion, many atrocities were carried out, for example: the Crusades (Catholics vs Muslims), Inquisition (Catholics against everyone else), the Thirty Years’ War (Catholics vs Protestants). In these examples, the aim was for the Roman Catholic Church to obtain power. Recently, we are witnessing Muslim fanatics carrying out acts of terrorism to gain a foothold on the world stage. There are also some local cults, whose spiritual leaders isolate the community from the world and commit all sorts of crimes. None of this has anything to do with religious purposes. Religion is a peaceful endeavour aimed to help its community.

If in the past it would be difficult to find someone who did not believe in any religion, nowadays it is very common to stumble across someone with no religion whatsoever. Societies today provide structures to support citizens in areas where religions used to dominate. Thus, religion is increasingly seen as an option and not as a duty. However, it is also common to find those who believe in God, but do not follow any religion. And then, there are the agnostics, who have doubts about the existence of God, and atheists, who do not believe in God at all.

Religion is important for believers, but those believers do not have the right to impose their religion on others. Likewise, it is not right to deny a community or a specific person the practice of the religion of their choice. There are different reasons why an individual chooses a certain religion (or no religion at all), family tradition may be the first one. Yet, if someone does not believe in God, he/she should not be judged by those who believe. Faith, in the sense of a “firm belief in something for which there is no proof” is personal: whether you believe or you do not. Non-believers should also not try to convince believers they are wrong. Rational arguments will not work in one way such as emotional arguments will not work in the other way. However, fanaticism of all forms is not religious and should be fought by everyone.

 

Belonging to a nation

Immigrants/emigrants, children and grandchildren of immigrants/emigrants, people that are born in a country, but move to another within their first month of existence, people that are born in a country, but are adopted by a family of another country, people who move from country to country for professional reasons and take their family with them… Belonging to a nation can be tricky. The concept of nationality includes other concepts like identity, language, territory, traditions. Below, these concepts are explored and shown how they are interconnected. After all, words are not chosen by chance. 

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Keyword: FAMILY | What are friends for?

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has a very interesting entry on “friend”. It says that the word “friend” in English came from Old English and Old German meaning “to like”, “to love”, “to set free”, and “peace”. In a way, our ancestors considered someone as a friend as someone who would “set them free” from oppression or imprisonment of some kind. Someone who would provide us with peace.

There are different types of friends. Acquaintances are people with whom one gets along with, in peace, but with whom one has a superficial relationship. The majority of people we know fall in this category. Allies are those with whom we do something, often against other groups of individuals. For example, our business partners or our team colleagues. Then, there are the ones we cherish and trust. Some may say these are true friends or best friends. Finding peace is difficult, as we live in rather competitive and aggressive societies. And there are more chances of finding someone who wants to boss us around than to set us free. Therefore, “true friends” are hard to find, indeed.

Girlfriends and boyfriends are those with whom we have a romantic relationship. Interestingly, in the English language, as in other languages, the difference between “friend” and a romantic partner is very thin. In other languages, like Spanish, the distinction is quite clear (“noivo” and “noiva” are romantically involved whereas “amigo” and “amiga” are not). Does this mean that in some languages speakers see romantic partners as “friends with benefits” or that in other languages they simply need to make the romantic status clearer? Considering the English connection between “friend” and “freedom”, maybe, in the latter case, romantic relationships are seen as more “captivating”.

At this point, it is useful to check what an enemy is: “one that is hostile toward another”. Some synonyms are: opponent, foe, hostile, adversary, antagonist, attacker, rival, competitor. It sounds simple enough. If you bring peace and are likable, you are a friend. If you are hostile and you are against me, you are an enemy. Now, the question is: if someone you cherish and care about is hostile towards you for whatever reason, is that person your enemy or a friend with a temporary dysfunction?

This is where the concept of trust comes in. For example, in war situations, negotiations are extremely difficult because there is no trust between antagonists. If you reach an agreement, you really don’t know if the other side will comply with the duties agreed upon. In friendships, especially the closest ones, the possibility of betrayal can be very high. That is why a betrayal hurts so much: you put your trust in someone and that person uses it against you. A former friend turns into an enemy. On the other hand, a former enemy can also turn into a friend. Once the initial hostility is gone, you may find you can trust that person whom you previously thought was hostile.

The problem in real life is that the line between friend and enemy is not always so clear. For example, in a toxic friendship, you trust a person who is actually doing harm to you. He or she is not exactly an enemy (they can even make you believe they have your best interests at heart), and yet they don’t bring you peace nor set you free. On the other hand, someone may be trying to make you see that you are mistaken about a situation or a person. You regard this person as aggressive, even though he or she is actually trying to set you free.

Friendship doesn’t have a purpose in itself, but can be very useful. Friends can help us face an aggressor or leave a bad situation. They can help us build something or destroy something that is hurting us. They give us hope in desperate situations and give us a hand when we are almost drowning. They make us feel good about ourselves instead of belittling us or pointing out our faults. They help us think instead of telling us what we should do (and then be angry when you don’t follow their advice). They know we are not perfect human beings and that we are going to fail and make mistakes (and they still keep on liking us and trusting us). They don’t expect anything from you, but are the first to get closer when something bad happens.

You can have different friends for different situations. For example, the person that helps you choose your car insurance may not be the same that helps you leave a toxic relationship. A stranger can be crucial in a moment of distress and then you never see him or her again. A childhood friend can give you the appreciation you need to have confidence in yourself throughout your life. Different types of friends for different situations.

The trick to distinguish between friend and foe is to pay attention and keep these concepts in mind. You may be surprised.

 

** YOUR WORDS AND IDEAS **

By Isabella Muir | On 19 April 2025 at 12:51
A thoughtful piece and a reminder that we all need a support network, even if that network is just one or two people who we rarely see, but we know that we can trust them to be good listeners. I reckon that although there are many people who like their personal space, there are few who want to live their lives in total isolation. Hooray for friendship in all its forms!

By Words in Ideas | On 19 April 2025 at 14:15
You are absolutely right! Hooray, indeed! 🙂

 

Keyword: FAMILY | It takes a village

If someone asked someone else what family was, that person would probably answer: the father, the mother, and their children (adopted or not). Or two mothers and their children, or two fathers and their children. This is what is called the “nuclear family”. “Extensive family” would include aunts, uncles, cousins, godparents, grandparents, maybe even family friends. If that someone wanted to go even further, he or she could talk about the “distant family”, which are second cousins, third cousins, great uncles, great aunts, and the like. People that you probably never met in your life.

The historian James Casey wrote the book “The History of the Family”, published in 1989, advancing the studies of Friedrich Engels, whose book “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” was published in 1884. These studies were developed from different perspectives: while James Casey aimed to write the history of what is considered “family”, Friedrich Engels aimed to explain how the State came to be, as a result of an evolution of the primitive blood-related organizations.

James Casey began his book by defining what “family” actually is. His conclusion was: there is no clear definition. Etymologically, “family” comes from the Latin word familia, that used to mean the assets of a household: the man, the woman (each one with their own role) and everyone else who lived in that house, including the slaves. It was more like an enterprise than a “nuclear family” as we understand it today. Yet, this was not the first kind of family that existed. Primitive peoples had complicated structures that included all blood-related members under the same tribe or clan, although it was possible to “adopt” some outsiders.

There are a few traits we still keep from those primitive times, like loyalty towards our blood relatives. Back then, being part of a tribe or a clan would imply the duty to avenge a member who was attacked or killed by a member of another tribe. This is still important in some “tribes”, especially families, but also groups of friends acting as alternative families. Bloodline would also determine each person’s place in society and it is still very influential today, especially in some cultures or in certain circles.

These primitive peoples were matriarchies, meaning that bloodlines were defined by mothers. However, children were raised by the community. According to Engels, this changed when men became the owners of the agricultural equipment, which they wished to pass on to their children (in other words, heritage). This became even more important as men acquired more property. So, men decided that bloodline would stop being defined by mothers and became defined by fathers. To ensure that children born to their wives were theirs, women became their property, together with houses, equipment, slaves, and servants. Hence, the familia.

Engels proved that society was structured by the way families would relate between themselves and would exercise power socially and politically. In the feudal regime, each family would belong to a caste (the main castes were nobility and commoners) and their hierarchy would depend on their possessions. The concept of family as we know today (the nuclear family) is a product of the changes that took place from the 17th century onwards (during the Industrial Revolution) with the decline of the feudal regime. The private sphere detached from the public sphere and children started to go to school in order to become professionals. From an early age, children would learn about individual responsibilities and would acquire the skills to compete with others for a job and a position in society. By losing their central role, “extensive families” lost their power to influence social and political matters. As the individual became the social unit, his “family” became smaller: only his wife and their children, living in a domestic home. However, some things did not change: men remained the heads of the household.

Under this new society structure, people could marry whoever they wanted and were not obliged to have their parents’ consent (due to heritage purposes). Love turned into the main reason for marriage and divorce started to rise. Individuals were liberated from the bonds and duties of belonging to blood-related communities, but they also lost their benefits. For example, raising children is now the sole responsibility of parents when it was a community task. Social life was more spontaneous because the houses were open to everyone and several nuclear families lived in each house. Today, individuals are more alone and with more responsibility on their shoulders.

Yet, the concept of family is changing again. Men are losing their permanent position as heads of the household. Domestic roles are shifting and both adults are taking on equally household chores and raising the children. As divorces increase, people create new nuclear families that cross over with the nuclear families previously created. Grandparents are living longer, but they keep their independent lives after retirement. On the other hand, professional careers are getting more demanding, the internet is leading to isolation, and people are feeling lost. How will families adapt to these new times?

 

Information, knowledge, wisdom

Fake news is not a new phenomenon. Propaganda, falsehood, and pure lies have been around since human beings are human beings. The difference to our days is quantity. There is so much information going in every direction that it is hard to keep track of what is true and what is false. There is plenty of information about how to verify the authenticity of information circulating in the public domain. For example, media channels have teams to do just that.

Common people may feel lost with contradictory information. Besides distinguishing what is true and what is false, or deciding what to believe in, people also have to discover what is the best course of action for any given event. These are increasingly difficult tasks and basic concepts may help. Clarifying those concepts is the aim of the following.

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Keyword: TIME | Diamonds are forever

Diamonds are forever, sparkling round my little finger
Unlike men, the diamonds linger

According to Shirley Bassey in her song “Diamonds are Forever” (from the James Bond film’s soundtrack), a diamond ring is more valuable than a romantic relationship. Considering that the ratio divorce-marriage is generally 50% nowadays, maybe she is right. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of relationships are not forever. And that is fine. They don’t have to be. However, it is paramount to have means of subsistence. Financial independence is crucial for both men and women. And diamonds are extremely valuable. Having a diamond ring means having an object that you can sell if you need a lot of money.

“Diamonds are forever” was actually a marketing slogan of a private diamond mining company. The message was: giving a (big stone) diamond ring when proposing marriage to your fiancée shows how much you love her and proves that your love will be forever. The marketing campaign was so well executed that people still believe in such an idea today. Which is false, obviously. The quantity of couples who break up after the man had given the woman such an engagement ring speaks for itself. In the meantime, diamond companies are making a lot of money.

Human beings like to chaise “forever”: they want to live forever, want to be forever young, want to love forever, want to be friends forever… But is there anything that lasts forever? And what is “forever” anyway? Until Earth ceases to exist? Yes, Earth will cease to exist when the Sun dies and engulfs Earth 4,500,000,000 from now”. Therefore, not even Earth will last forever.

In truth, “forever” can last until we die, until the relationship ends or until tomorrow. Forever is a perception, representing our wish for something (good, of course) to never end. Or representing something bad that seems to never end, regardless of our wish for it to end. At some point, it does end, both the good and the bad. The truth is: nothing lasts forever. Even diamonds can be damaged and destroyed and, if that happens, their lustre would wear off.

“Timeless” can be a less elusive term. It means that its value doesn’t change over time. For example, a song that is timeless is a song that is beautiful long after it was composed. Classical music is timeless: we still listen to and appreciate it centuries after it was first heard publicly. You can say diamonds are timeless too. Since that marketing campaign, diamonds have stopped being common minerals to become a precious piece of luxury jewellery. Its beauty and expensive cost are still the same.

Diamonds are not endless. At least, not the natural ones, the ones which are mined in places like Russia, Botswana, Canada, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Africa, among others countries. Researchers have found a way to fabricate synthetic diamonds. However, this process is too expensive, thus, its production is not massive. Besides, the natural ones are considered to be of higher quality. When the mining ends, and it will at some point, will the production of synthetic diamonds skyrocket?

Life is always changing. We get older, children grow up, we get promoted or fired, we get a new job, we move to another city or another country, we meet new people. Society changes too, as well as beliefs, traditions, perspectives. Therefore, holding on to “old stuff” can make us weak and vulnerable, as we lack the flexibility to adapt. “Forever” may not be as good as it sounds. Imagine what it would be like if Europe was stuck forever in the Roman Empire…

Forever can be especially terrible in harmful situations. For example, countries that are in war, marriages where there is violence, jobs with toxic cultures. It is good to know that these situations are not endless, although some problems can be timeless. Yet, negative situations can trigger evolution. They can actually be an opportunity to improve and find creative and innovative solutions. When everything runs smoothly, no matter how good it may sound, it leads to a standstill and standstill leads to decay. In reality, improvement is the guarantee for maintaining good stuff.

“Living in the moment”, “appreciate the little things”, “be in the moment”, are some of today’s mantras. These are other “versions” of “forever”, attempts to freeze the good things and ignore the bad things. We can see this to a great extent in social media, where people want to show how happy they are. There are common themes like (good) food, sunsets, drinks with friends, luxury holidays with romantic partners. In other words, the lifestyle which is considered ideal. And people are made to believe that this ideal lifestyle can last forever.

At the beginning of June 1940, the inhabitants of Paris were living their lives as usual. The echoes of war were still far away and many believed war would not get there. Suddenly, they were surprised with the news that the German Army was only a few kilometres away. Panic took hold of people and in two days two million men, women, and children filled the roads with the possessions they could gather in such a short time. Their “forever” life ended on the next day and no one knew what to do or what would come next.

 

** YOUR WORDS AND IDEAS **

By Isabella Muir | On 19 March 2025 at 15:21
Fascinating article and one that gets us thinking about time and the importance of moments. How would our priorities shift if we were told we only had a year left? And what we have told our younger selves if we knew then what we know now? And who can explain how it is that the older we are, the faster time seems to slip by?! If we could slow down ‘forever’ surely that would be worth more than diamonds?!

By Words in Ideas | On 20 March 2025 at 12:43
Thank you! I’m glad it made you think about how short-lived our life here on Earth is. Time is truly precious, more precious than diamonds. Einstein discovered that time is relative. As we get older, time seems to go faster, but it doesn’t. The pace is the same, our perception is what changes. We can’t slow down time, but it’s up to us to make it worthwhile. Like Gandalf said in the book “The Fellowship of the Ring”, by J.R.R. Tolkien: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

By Isabella Muir | On 20 March 2025 at 15:41
Thanks Ana Catarina, yes, how fortunate we are to have the wisdom of Tolkein and other great thinkers and writers to help us to stop and re-evaluate! Thanks for all your great articles, they are well researched and thoroughly enjoyable!

By Words in Ideas | On 21 March 2025 at 12:02
Thank you so much for your kind words! That is exactly my aim 🙂 Yes, we should pay more attention to what great thinkers and writers had/have to say. They figured it out before us. Like a great Portuguese artist once said: “When I was born, the sentences that would save humanity were already all written, there was just one thing left to do – to save humanity”. This is actually written on the walls of Saldanha tube station in Lisbon.

By Isabella Muir | On 23 March 2025 at 10:43
What a beautiful quote and a wonderful sentiment!

By Words in Ideas | On 23 March 2025 at 13:12
Indeed! 🙂

 

Keyword: TIME | Time and Space

Einstein once realized that if a person and a ball would fall from a building at the same time, the individual would not be aware of the speed in which the ball was falling. For him/her, it would look like the ball would be still. The same phenomenon happens when we are in a speeding car. If a car next to ours is at the same speed, it seems we are both still. We are unaware of the space and the time passing by. This means that space and time are relative.

Objects in the universe are moving in a space-time continuum. As they move forward in space, time is also moving forward. We are not aware that Earth is moving, but it is. And we are not aware that time is passing unless we look at the clock or we watch the sun rise and set. For example, people lose track of time if they are living in a place where the sun is blocked and they do not have a watch (like in a bunker).

Seasons are dependent on the movement of Earth around the Sun. Through observation, humans realized that seasons would follow a cycle with four different phases. Astronomically speaking, solstices mark the most extreme points (Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn), hence winter and summer. Halfway in each direction, the Sun goes through the equinoxes (on the Equator line), signalling Spring and Autumn.

Calendars were built as a way to measure this for agriculture purposes as it was necessary to plan when to sow and when to harvest. Different methods were used, and some are still in use simultaneously. The reference is the Gregorian Calendar, which is based on the movement of Earth around the Sun. After some adjustments, it was established that one year would correspond to a complete turn around the Sun. The year would be divided into 12 months and each three months would correspond to a season. Christianity determined the birth of Jesus Christ as the first year AD (Anno Domini, Latin for “in the year of the Lord”). That was 2025 years ago (or 2025 complete turns around the Sun). The years BC (Before Christ), or BCE (Before Common Era), are counted backwards from that first year.

There are other calculations, which consider other starting points. Assyrians are an ancient people from the Mesopotamia region (somewhere between today’s Iran, Iraq, and Syria) and are currently in the year 6773. According to the Hebrew calendar, Jewish people are currently in the year 5785. Buddhists are currently in the year 2565 and Persians in 1402. The Islamic Calendar is based on the Moon cycle and started its counting on the year the prophet Muhammad moved to Medina (the Hijrah). They are currently in the year 1446. In China, they built a calendar based on the lunar cycle, but taking the Sun cycle into consideration. Instead of indefinitely adding up years, they named them. The Chinese created a 60-year cycle combining the names of 12 animals with the 5 elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water). That was 4722 years ago.

Age (the number of years each individual has “completed the turn around the Sun”) is increasingly gaining weight for determining a person’s life. For any given age, there are certain types of duties and demands that are asked of people. It can be tough if you do not meet those age requirements and it can be a reason for discrimination. This is called Ageism. Discrimination towards older people is a known phenomenon, but it can happen at any age. Like many other discriminations, this one is “hidden” because these actions are considered “normal behaviour”. In other words, age discrimination is accepted. Like other discriminations, it should be censored.

For centuries, people organized their lives based on seasons because agriculture was the centre of their lives. Then, during the Industrial Revolution, people began to organize their lives based on years, months, weeks, days, and hours in a combination between the movement of Earth around the Sun (years) and the movement of Earth around itself (days). It was established that noon would be when the Sun would reach its highest point in the sky. The hours of the day were then calculated accordingly. Due to the rotation of Earth on itself, adjustments were made around the world to meet these criteria, hence time zones. Except in China. There, it was established that the whole country, which has five time zones, would use the same standard time. So, the Sun can reach its highest point in the sky in a different time, depending on the region.

Earth is about 4,500,000,000 years and homo sapiens exist for 200,000 years. In a way, there is no past and no future, only evolution. Earth has been evolving since its creation, going through different phases. Life on Earth has already been extinct five times in the “past”, but it was born again in different forms. If humans get extinct, Earth will keep moving through space and time and another type of life will be born.

We are connected with space and time as a tiny piece of a celestial object moving through the universe, interacting with other celestial objects. Whenever we take a step forward, a second has passed. If we travel to another country, we also travel into the “future”. Even when we are still, we are moving because we move with Earth, both in space and in time.

 

World domination

Thucydides is considered the “father” of history because of his book “The History of the Peloponnesian War”, which he wrote in the 5th century. Besides describing the war itself, in which he was an active participant, he also describes the context and behind-the-scenes political manoeuvres, portraits both sides of the conflict, and makes other considerations. The book is not finished, but the story of this war is known. In a nutshell, the Peloponnesian War was a conflict between a declining power (Sparta, home of the famous 300) and an emerging power (Athens). They were both fighting for world domination, which, in this case, was Greece.

Graham Allison studied Thucydides’ book and compared what was written there with other similar conflicts. Then, he coined the term “Thucydides’ Trap” to explain the phenomenon theoretically (which is to say, academically). His goal was to understand how the rising of China could impact the world and lead to a war with the USA. The conclusions…

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“Longshore Drift”, by David EP Dennis

Charles Dickens came to Hastings in 1861 to perform a public reading of A Christmas Carol in the Old Music Hall now called Yates’s Wine Lodge. This event is celebrated during the Hastings Literary Festival in the autumn as ‘Dickens Day’ during which, other aspects of Dickens’ life are highlighted. He saw poverty all around him in workhouses and factories and described them in harrowing detail in books such as Oliver Twist, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, David Copperfield, and Great Expectations.

When he came to Hastings, he may well have walked on the sea front and watched the waves shooshing the shingle from Eastbourne to Hastings in a slow rolling movement that has never ceased since the beginning of the world. However, the first recorded use of the precise term was not written down until 1893 by someone unknown wizard of coastal geomorphology. It refers to the geological process by which sediments such as sand and gravel are transported along a coastline, parallel to the shore, due to the action of waves approaching at an angle.

The word ‘Long’ derives from the Old English word ‘lang’, meaning ‘having considerable linear extent.’ ‘Shore’ comes from the Old English ‘scora’, referring to the land adjacent to a large body of water. ‘Drift’ stems from the Old English ‘drifan’, meaning ‘to drive’ or ‘to force along,’ which evolved to denote movement caused by external forces.

But this article is not purely about shingle movement. Instead, it is about the drift of ideas along the shoreline from Eastbourne to Hastings.
Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818, in Trier, Prussia (now Germany). His great friend Friedrich Engels was born on 28 November 1820, in Barmen, Prussia (now Wuppertal, Germany). They first met on August 28, 1844, when Friedrich Engels visited Karl Marx in Paris, where Marx was living in exile. They spent ten days discussing philosophy, economics, and revolutionary politics, forming an instant intellectual and political bond. This meeting led to their first major joint works, ‘The Holy Family’ (1845), and later ‘The Communist Manifesto’ (1848).

Much later, Volume 1 of Das Kapital (Kritik der politischen Ökonomie – Critique of Political Economy) was published on 14 September 1867 in Hamburg, Germany. The book analysed capitalism’s structure, introducing key concepts like surplus value, class struggle, and commodity fetishism.
Marx and Engels both visited Sussex, coming to Eastbourne in the autumn of 1881 because Marx had bronchitis and pleurisy. In those days, the seaside with its alleged iodine atmosphere (really the smell of rotting seaweed) was recommended by physicians for its sea air and mild climate. Coming to the seaside was also an intellectual escape from the pressure of London.

Marx then died in 1883, but Engels continued to come to Eastbourne and other coastal towns to relax but also to continue to develop Marxist Theory. Engels died in London on 5th August 1895 aged seventy-four at his home at 122 Regent’s Park Road, Primrose Hill and, being a resolute atheist, he wanted to be cremated.

This growing movement away from churchyard internment had already become associated with radical, freethinkers and secularists. He had his wish at Woking Crematorium in Surrey, Britain’s first crematorium established in 1878. A large group of colleagues and friends attended this ceremony including Eleanor Marx who was Karl Marx’s daughter. There also were Eduard Bernstein, a leading socialist for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), August Bebel, co-founder of the SPD, William Liebknecht who was a Marxist convert and friend of Engels. There were many other people there from the British Social Democratic Foundation (SDF).

Part of Engel’s time in Eastbourne had been spent walking on the beautiful landscape of Beachy Head with its massive chalk cliffs, downland scenery and iconic Belle Tout Lighthouse built in 1834. Following his wishes, most of the people who attended his cremation service at Woking then travelled to Eastbourne where Eleanor Marx and others in a simple secular ceremony cast his ashes into the westerly breeze – out over Beachy Head cliffs and down into the grey-blue sea where the longshore drift carried him ever so slowly towards Hastings.

With each angled wave, the tiny particles of Engels’ dust came along the coast, adding to patches of fine low tide sand as they settled in deep by Hastings Pier, opened in 1872. However, a large part of him continued through the English Channel and landed on the coasts of Europe, where they coated the feet of migratory birds – those wonderful swifts, swallows, cranes, and eagles that had come each year from Georgia.
When the birds returned each year to Georgia, tiny particles of Engels reached the Georgian shore of the Black Sea and some birds flew as far inland as Tbilisi, known then as Tiflis.

One day in 1898 a migratory bird landed on the shoulder of a 19-year-old student priest named Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili who attending Tiflis Theological Seminary. The bird flapped its wings and tiny particles of Engel’s flew up the young lad’s nose, infecting him with Marx and Engel’s ideas. He quickly changed his name to Stalin, meaning ‘steel-like’ and then proceeded to kill millions of people because he was a psychopath.
One year later, living in St Petersburg there was a law student named Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov who was sorrowful because his brother Alexander had been arrested and executed for planning the assassination of Tsar Alexander III. He heard about Marx and Engels from friends who had been watching migratory birds having dust baths and became infected with ideas. Then, when he moved to Samara on the Volga River, some 620 miles from Moscow, he gave himself the undercover name of Lenin, derived from the River Lena, to mask his revolutionary activities.

Stalin and Lenin first met in Tornio, Finland in 1905, during a time when Lenin was coordinating efforts for the 1905 revolution. At that time, Lenin had heard of Stalin’s efforts and his work with the revolutionary movement in Georgia, and they discussed the potential for coordinated action in the broader Russian revolution.

Meanwhile, the portion of Engel’s powdered remains that had embedded itself in the low tide sands of Hastings came into contact with the toes of a man called Robert Noonan, an Irish-born socialist who was walking on the shore in 1901. The dust of Engels caused him mystically to author his famous book The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, using the name Robert Tressel. This described poverty, exploitation, and harsh working conditions. By 1910 Tressel was ill, and poverty-stricken himself. He died of tuberculosis in Liverpool on his way to a better life in Canada in 1911.

However, before he left Hastings, he and others formed the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) – a Marxist group hoping to counteract the dominance of Tory capitalist ideology. The SDF in Hastings actively campaigned against local councillors who were perceived to be colluding with big businesses, particularly concerning utilities like gas and electricity. Their efforts sought to expose and challenge corruption, advocating for the rights and welfare of the working class.

Members organised public meetings, distributed literature, and engaged in discussions to raise awareness about socialist ideals. These activities aimed to educate the people of Hastings on issues of social justice, workers’ rights, and economic equality.
Nowadays we steer sharply away from the horrors of Stalin and even from the excessive revolutionary radicalism of Marx and Engels. However, we do wish for social improvement and a reduction in the gap between rich and poor – if you get my drift. •

David EP Dennis [external link] worked with the Royal Air Forces for 25 years and travelled to remote places like Ascension Island, the Falklands Islands, and Oman. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and writes about Medieval Times in England for Sea Road Creative Research [external link] and uses photography to champion nature conservation. He also collaborates with the Hastings Independent local newspaper [external link].

 

“Looking back into the future”, by Isabella Muir

I’ve been looking back as a way of looking forward! Studying history is a useful way to reflect on the past, to discover lessons that may be learned to prepare ourselves for the future. The more I look back, the more I can see that so many world events recycle themselves in a never-ending repetition of gain and loss.
My personal fascination with history is in events that affected Britain during and after the Second World War, and the more I learn, the more I see a familiarity in the arguments being posed today about the way forward for our increasingly fractured world.
But for now let’s focus on the 1960s, when more than a decade after the end of the Second World War, Britain was still reeling from the loss of life, the devastation, and the underlying fear that such hard-earned peace might be short-lived.
The sixties brought with it a generation of youngsters who believed they could put the past behind them and surge forward to a better life. Social and political attitudes began to change, with significant events acting as forerunners of even greater change.
I explore some of those changes in a series of fictional stories, entitled the Mountfield Road Mysteries where we meet some tenants who come to live in a tiny bedsit at Number 1, Mountfield Road, in the Sussex seaside town of Hastings. The tenants have little in common, except for their decision to rent a room from a certain Mr Humphrey, a landlord who is a stickler for traditions and protocols that were fast disappearing.
The first book in the series, Storms of Change [external link], is set in 1960. We meet Marcus Chase, a young man keen to throw off the constraints of his childhood and teenage years, breaking free from his home in London and moving south to Hastings.
He meets Fred and Gilly Barnes, the couple who rent the flat below, and is soon absorbed by their tales of adventure, impressed by their carefree attitude to life. But like everything in life, all is not as bright as it would first appear…
One year on, in Whispers of Fortune [external link], we meet Sally Hilton, a young woman who is certain 1961 could be her year.
‘You can be whoever and whatever you want to be,’ are her mother’s words to Sally throughout her childhood. But Sally doesn’t know who she wants to be. That is the problem.
When the thirty-fifth President of the United States is elected to office, Sally Hilton is worrying about the ladder in her stockings. It’s her only pair and needs to last until payday on Friday. In his augural speech, John F. Kennedy promises significant change to his fellow Americans. In Britain, the sense of euphoria is contagious. If not us, then who? If not now, when? Powerful words spill out from the skilled orator, and Sally Hilton, with her laddered stockings and empty purse, wants to believe they will make a difference. Change is coming, not just for Americans, but for the ‘free world’, whatever that means.
Then Sally notices a card in the newsagent’s window. It feels like a sign…
In the third book in the series, Flashes of Doubt [external link], we meet William Arnold. Forced into retirement, having to leave his cosy cottage and move to a tiny bedsit in Mountfield Road, Hastings, William Arnold wants nothing more than to remember the past, a time when he understood the world, when he had a role to play, a purpose. Then William meets sixteen-year-old Peter, a young lad who challenges William to revise his thinking completely…
The 1960s was a decade when young people were finding their voice and older people were struggling to come to terms with the newly defined ‘generation gap’.
Some say the ‘swinging sixties’ really took off in Britain in 1964, the year that saw the Beatles rise to international fame, but it was 1960 when the group first got together, playing sessions in the now world-famous Cavern Club in Liverpool by 1961. An explosion of talent emerged during the next few years, with a host of pop and rock artists, many whose music is just as popular today.
Mary Quant, among others, transformed the way young people dressed, as interior designers, such as Terence Conran, transformed the way many people furnished their homes, offering contemporary furniture at affordable prices.
As well as music and fashion, the growth of consumerism and the widespread availability of labour-saving devices meant people had more leisure time to enjoy.
It was also the decade when car ownership took off, with estimates suggesting the numbers of people owning cars rose during the decade from around nine million to fifteen million. Thinking back to my childhood, I recall so few cars passed by our house there was no danger for me to cross the road on my own at the tender age of eight. And yet, that same road now sees tens of thousands of vehicles pass along it every day, with young and old taking their life in their hands should they decide to venture from one side to the other.
A typical 1960s house was difficult to heat, with windows that let in as much of the weather as they kept out. Central heating hadn’t arrived for most families, leaving them with few options – a coal fire (with coal being an expensive commodity), a two-bar electric fire, which would eat up any money being put into the meter, or a paraffin stove with its fumes.
Young people had grown up in the shadow of war, with new threats being posed by the Cold War and growing tensions between the East and West. National Service was still in place, an experience that brought up conflicting emotions for many young men. What was right and what was wrong when it came to conflict? There were no easy answers then and many would say, there are no easy answers now.
With the threat of nuclear armaments circling, many young people joined the peace protests taking place across Britain. The term ‘teenager’ only entered into common usage in Britain during the 1950s. Around that time young people started to find their voice, with two distinct groups emerging: beatniks and teddy boys.
Both groups were strongly influenced by American music, Teddy Boys loving rock and roll, wearing long, draped jackets, and sporting the kind of hairstyle worn by Elvis Presley with his slicked back quiff, all kept in place with plenty of Brylcreem. Beatniks, by contrast, wore duffel coats and berets, long hair and preferred jazz. The ‘beat generation’ was said to have been inspired by writers such as Jack Kerouac, among others. Reacting to the experiences of the Second World War, this was a movement that sought to promote peace. Later in the sixties, the ideals promoted by beatniks were taken forward by another aspect of the counter-culture of that period – the hippies.
Both groups frequented coffee bars, vying over the jukebox. In the 1950s and 1960s, coffee bars were popular meeting places for teenagers. They were often the setting for live music, as well as the ubiquitous jukebox. Skiffle music was popular at that time, a type of jazz and blues-influenced folk music that was the precursor to British rock ‘n’ roll.
British teenagers made coffee bars their own; they were a cheap place to ‘hang out’, after all, coffee had no legal age limit. It’s said that London’s most famous 1950s coffee bar – the ’21s’ – famously launched, among others, Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard. In Liverpool, the Jacaranda club in Slater Street was a haunt for the Beatles in their early days, while Cilla Black waitressed at the Zodiac coffee bar in Duke Street, another musicians’ favourite.
Many women in their middle years who survived the Second World War came to realise they could achieve more with their lives than previously imagined. With so many men away fighting, women had taken on vital roles as mechanics, engineers, air raid wardens, bus and fire engine drivers. They took on dangerous work in munition factories and helped to build ships and aeroplanes. The end of the war brought an enormous change for them, as well as for the men who returned from the front. Attitudes had shifted, new horizons had opened up, and the years that followed confirmed that nothing would be quite the same again.
Aside from the changes that a strengthening youth culture brought about, Britain began to see the problems brought about by intensive farming, with nature beginning to suffer. Alongside the rise in car ownership, new towns were built where there was previously agricultural land. How much consideration was being given to the environment? We see the longer term effects now, with our loss of wildlife habitats and the very real fears about climate change.
Across the world, in China, as part of Chairman Mao Zedong’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ initiative that ran from 1958 to 1962, the Chinese people were ordered to eliminate rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. The order came as the authorities decided that these ‘pests’ were damaging crops and the sparrows were eating too much grain. Over that period some one billion sparrows were killed, including the total population of tree sparrows. However, it seems the Chairman’s plan would backfire. The sparrows were a vital part of the Chinese ecosystem, as well as eating grain, sparrows ate locusts. Without the sparrows the locusts flourished. By 1960, locusts decimated the rice crops, resulting in one of the worst man-made famines ever experienced. The exact numbers of people who died during the famine is unknown, but it’s suggested that it was between twenty and forty million people. It’s certainly a reminder that tampering with nature will inevitably create problems for our whole ecosystem, mankind included.
I will continue to explore the past, to learn from the good and the bad, and above all, continue to hope for a positive future. •

Isabella Muir [external link] writes novels, novellas, and short stories about post-Second War World Britain and she runs an independent publishing company, Outset Publishing. Some of Isabella Muir’s books are translated into Italian [external link] and Portuguese.

 

Keyword: ENTERTAINMENT | Social Life

In the novel “Anna Karenina”, written by Leo Tolstoy, the main character is a socialite, happily married and with children. She moves with ease and joy from one social event to the other, without much care about the world outside. She feels good inside her bubble until she falls completely in love with Count Vronsky. What starts as a scandalous adulterous affair, ends with a decision to divorce her husband. Due to this, Anna Karenina is banned from society. At first, she doesn’t mind, but, as time goes by and passion diminishes, she begins missing her beloved social life. She endures her isolation as much as she can, but, at last, she can’t take it anymore and tragedy strikes.

Just like Anna Karenina, people who are used to having an intense social life may suffer greatly when such social life is interrupted. The lockdowns due to the COVID pandemic made this quite clear. These lockdowns were temporary, but lasted long enough to increase mental problems like depression. If we take Anna Karenina’s example, not even love is strong enough to face the challenge of being without social life. And it’s not just about fun and entertainment, it is about missing the people: the loved ones, the friends, the accomplices of jokes about the others. It’s the feeling of belonging somewhere, of being important, of mattering.

Social life has always been vital for human beings. In prehistoric times, people lived in communities where every member had a role to play and survival depended on everyone playing their part. They had to hunt together and agree on the strategy to follow, build together, do daily tasks together, raise the children together. Free time was also spent together. When exactly did they start singing and dancing it’s a mystery, but once entertainment started, it never went away. As society became more complex, so did entertainment. Nowadays, it’s hard to do something spontaneously. Everything is organized and people need to buy tickets or register in advance. Entertainment has to be part of one’s personal calendar. There are those who even have weekly appointments: cinema or theatre on Fridays, dinner out on Saturdays, day out on Sundays. Then, there are the annual events (like Christmas) and fairs.

We follow the unwritten social rules everyone else follows. We live by example; what others do, it’s what we do. Anna Karenina mastered this. She knew how to speak, what she could say or not say, how to dress, how to behave, which parties to go to and which parties to avoid, the men and women to talk to and those to avoid. All was fluid, all was right, all was perfect. That’s the aim because that’s how we are accepted in the group. However, there can be a downside: you can lose yourself in the crowd. To be accepted in the group, one has to talk like the group, think like the group, be like the group. Usually there is no formal hierarchy, but you have to know who set the example and follow them. And you have to prove all the time that you deserve to continue belonging to the group. If you fail, there are consequences and punishments. Anna Karenina dared to break the rules of society and got expelled forever without any possibility of redemption.

Lonely people can be seen as outcasts, like they would have an infectious disease and should be avoided at all times. Yet, the number of people living alone tends to increase as the GDP per capita increases. This may mean that when people have a higher income, they also have more options. For example, in the past, women had to get married to survive, as it was difficult for them to get a job; they depended entirely on men. Nowadays, working women are an undeniable reality and many of them prefer to live by themselves. Therefore, these “lonely people”, may be people who are unable to comply with the unwritten social rules or who just reject such rules so they can be themselves.

Society is changing and social life is changing with it. For example, people go to the cinema less often because they can stream films and TV series at home. They prefer to buy a house with a swimming pool instead of going to the public swimming pool. They don’t need to go shopping; they can do that online. Museums and travel destinations can be enjoyed online as well. There is no need to go to a restaurant when you don’t have food at home; you can call a courier service and the food goes to your house. All these little errands people used to do in-person would inevitably lead to interactions with other people. If you would go to the same place regularly, you would start to get to know those who worked there and other customers. You would socialize. Not anymore; you can do everything by yourself in the comfort of your home… alone.

Nevertheless, new ways of interacting with others are emerging. It is no surprise that the number of workshops, conferences, music festivals, thematic fairs, and other types of events are increasing. Well, yes, it’s a way to make people spend their money on things other than daily life, but it’s also a way to meet new people in-person. Meeting people online is fine, but, at some point, everyone needs an in-person interaction. After all, human beings are social creatures, they need to socialize.

 

Keyword: ENTERTAINMENT | The weight of entertainment

Everyone wants to have fun, even those who take life too seriously and seldom smile. James Suzman’s study about work informs us that “leisure” was born after our ancestors learned how to master fire. This provided free time, which was spent by painting, building tools, and creating accessories (like necklaces). Just as working time evolved, so did leisure time. Nowadays, we have plenty to choose from: television, radio, cinema, amusing parks, museums, theatre, music, circus, comedy, ballet, workshops of different sorts, a wide range of parties, sports, literature, social media, video games, travelling… The list is very long.

What started as a way to pass the time (hence, the word “pastime”), turned into various industries. Entertainment means work for millions of people around the world. Moreover, the variety is so great that many people dedicate themselves to telling others what they should do to have fun: the dreaded critics. Of course, there are also journalists and bloggers who just recommend what they think is best. They are probably paid to do that. So, besides spending our working time being told what to do by our bosses, we end up being told what we should be doing in our free time: what books we should read, what films and TV series we should watch, what destination we should travel to, the amount of time we should play games, what sports we should practice, which parties we should go to… In a nutshell, we are constantly being advised on the right way to have fun.

The line between advice and censorship can be very thin. Throughout the centuries, there has been censorship for a numerous of reasons. Morality (often linked to religion) is number one. For example, the “Index Librorum Prohibitorum” was a list of banned books by the Roman Catholic Church, which existed between 1559 and 1966. Political regimes, especially dictatorships, are also very keen on banning books. The most terrifying event of this kind was the Book Burning on 10th May 1933 that took place in 34 cities in Germany almost simultaneously. Chosen by university students, thousands of books were looted from libraries, book stores, and publishing houses. Afterwards, the students piled up those books in public squares where thousands of people watched the students set the books on fire in a huge bonfire. And this was just the beginning.

Entertainment can also be used for propaganda purposes and for spreading a certain type of culture. That was the aim of the Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda of the Nazi regime. They did not just censor information and culture, they spread their ideology via cinema, theatre, education, the media. All information was controlled by the State. After World War II ended, the USA used the film industry (especially, but not exclusively) to portray the Soviet Union as the “bad guys”. The Cold War was particularly fertile in spy movies, where the CIA would always be better than the KGB.

Discrimination and preconceived ideas can also be spread through entertainment. For example, Western’s image of Eastern countries is based on what is depicted on television, cinema, and fictional books, which are based on crystallized notions that are passed down from generation to generation without being questioned. Most of these notions were built during colonialism. The acclaimed writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie shared her experience in her TED talk “The danger of a single story”. Not only her American university colleagues were mistaken about her Nigerian reality, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie also had a wrong image about other countries. Moreover, she tells us about how she became “African” in addition to being “Nigerian” and how she struggled with rejections about her writing not showing her “authentic” background enough. Culture can open our minds, but it can also limit them.

The weight of entertainment can be heavier than we realize. Having fun can become a political statement. Consuming entertainment products can shape your mind, limit your view of the world and twist your idea about “the others”. However, entertainment can also be an opportunity to get to know different realities, to open our minds to other cultures, to learn about ourselves and to realize that “the others” are basically like us, but with different backgrounds. Or, it can simply be a way to relax and stop thinking about serious things.

 

Keyword: BEAUTY | Beautiful Monsters

There is something fascinating about monsters. Maybe it’s because of their diversity. Perfect bodies of women and men are very much alike, whereas each monster has its own shape and is different from all others. Like Umberto Eco said, “[b]eauty is frequently boring, everybody knows what beauty is”. Therefore, he thought ugliness was much more interesting and fun. In a lecture about ugliness, he said: “It is a general phenomenon of our nature that sad, terrible, even horrific things are irresistibly attractive to us”. As it is scenes of suffering, as long as it doesn’t affect us directly.

In the Merriam Webster Thesaurus, monster is the same as demon, grotesque, ogre, Frankenstein, devil, terror, bogeyman, horror, mutant, abomination, abnormality, freak, weirdo, villain, brute, beast, savage, devil, criminal, offender, bandit, rogue, assassin, thug, gangster. Basically, everything that is considered bad in society. On the contrary, beautiful is everything that is considered good, like lovely, gorgeous, cute, charming, elegant, delightful, glorious, magnificent, perfect, fascinating, wonderful, excellent. According to the Catholic Church, monsters are part of Hell while good people go to Heaven. However, many people might say they would prefer Hell to Heaven as Heaven is a place where nothing happens and no one does anything. Apparently, suffering all kinds of horrors for all eternity is not scary enough…

The enemy is always ugly, monstrous, able only to commit atrocities while “our side” is composed exclusively of moral, just, and beautiful fighters. In literature, the good guys are also described with the best adjectives and their opponents, the villains, are described as ugly and deformed. Yet, monsters can be beautiful and nice, like the monster in the story of “Beauty and the Beast”. The “Beast” is a monster until he complies with the norm, which is explained to him by the “Beauty”. We might analyse this as men being beasts until they meet a beautiful woman who falls in love with them and transforms them into good people. Reality shows us every day that the story is not always like that. In fact, some men become beasts after they marry (hence, domestic violence). So, the idea that a woman can change a man through love is embedded in fairy tales. More recently, we have “Shrek” (although, in this story, the beautiful princess becomes an ogre, but essentially the story stands).

However, women that are monsters are beyond rehabilitation. For example, mermaids are beautiful women that live in the sea and have these wonderful singing voices, which they use to lure men (sailors, more precisely). These men are seduced and persuaded to follow the mermaids to the bottom of the sea, where they drown. Yes, modern stories have tried to give a better and romanticised picture of mermaids as miserable creatures, prisoners of some evil character. These mermaids are good and refuse to go along with evil. Then, a good man falls in love with her and saves her. The difference here is that women who are saved are not monsters, but victims of monsters. Besides being physically appealing, beautiful women are those who don’t fuss about anything, are patient no matter what happens, don’t look to other men (let alone have the desire to be with someone who is not her husband), don’t raise their voice, are self-confident, and lovely. Yet, beautiful women who are powerful are pictured as mean, bossy, lonely, frustrated, and someone to avoid at all costs; hence, monsters.

As Umberto Eco mentioned in his lecture, centuries ago women were seen as using makeup to conceal their imperfections. Yet, beautiful women (especially those who take care of their image) can also be seen as immoral, as little monsters who seduce men for evil purposes (like the mermaids). The balance is difficult: men want women to be beautiful and perfect, but women are expected to let men do whatever they want with them without women complaining. If they complain or, even worse, if they are the ones who take the initiative of seduction, they are monsters. There is a pattern of power playing in these stories, one where men always have the upper hand. By the way, have you noticed that witches are depraved young women or very ugly old women? Male wizards are old wise men who are pillars of society while witches should be kept away from men’s eyes (because who knows what can happen to men if men see them…).

Then, there are the monsters who are defective. Sometimes they are linked to people with disabilities, who were seen as monsters by society. In the old days, disabled people were locked up in dark places or were simply killed. They were considered as “damage goods”, which was how soldiers coming from war without a leg or an arm would also feel. These were people who were not perfect (thus, not beautiful), hence monsters.

In a nutshell, monsters are all those creatures or human beings who don’t comply with society’s norms for some reason, and should be cast out from society.

 

Keyword: BEAUTY | Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

The Cambridge Dictionary online has different definitions for beauty:

  • 1. “the quality of being pleasing and attractive” or “a person or thing that is pleasing and attractive”;
  • 2. “the business of making people look attractive, using make-up, treatments, etc.”;
  • 3. “something that is an excellent example of its type”.

1.
Beauty does not exist by itself; it is linked to what we value. For example, it is proven that we value symmetry, thus, humans who have a symmetrical face are considered more beautiful than all others. The same is true for architecture, especially buildings dating back to Classical Antiquity. However, symmetry by itself is not enough. Proportions are also important and the study of the Golden Ratio has confirmed that it was crucial for constructing the most beautiful buildings and representations of the perfect human body.

Other features are also important, for example, expression. Statues that are perfect, but have empty eyes and a neutral posture can be considered less beautiful than those which show some emotion, whether it is suffering, joy, fury, or expectation, for instance. People feel more attracted to what they can identify with and we all have emotions. And, of course, the more pleasurable those emotions are, the more they catch our eye. Colour is also another characteristic to consider. It is not by chance that the most famous paintings are colourful. However, the balance between colours is also important. Too much red and yellow in the Western countries might be considered tasteless. On the other hand, in China, these two colours are hugely appreciated.

Purpose has also some influence. Obviously, you can have objects with the sole purpose of being pretty, but this is not usually the case. Decorative objects usually have a theoretical function, even if they would never be used as such. Natural landscapes can also have purposes: to get fresh air, to escape from city life, to go hiking, to climb (the mountains), to connect with nature and feel energized. As long as it is enjoyable in some way, it is beautiful. For example, the image of chimneys spewing dark smoke in a bleak city is not enjoyable at all; it can actually make us feel miserable. However, not everyone enjoys the same landscapes. Some people prefer beaches to mountains, snowy fields to forests, historical buildings to modern buildings. Or the way around.

Although a major contribution, physical attraction is not enough for someone to be considered beautiful. Other qualities such as honesty, sense of humour, confidence, courage, kindness, and intelligence, are crucial. In fact, characteristics considered “bad”, like hypocrisy, being sullen, insecurity, cowardice, arrogance, stupidity, can taint the beauty of a perfect body. Of course, the way we dress and present ourselves matters. Dressing properly is equally important to make a good impression.

2.
Hair dyeing, make-up, perfume, beauticians and barber shops, SPAs, lotions of all kinds, fashionable clothing and glittering jewellery, gyms and health centres… Natural beauty is a wonderful thing, especially if it has a little (big) help. The richer you are, the more chances you have of becoming beautiful. If everything fails, you can always resort to plastic surgery. Money can make you slimmer, younger and more radiant. It can also pay psychologists or coaches (or both) for you to learn how to look happier, more confident, and more accomplished. It can also pay for luxury holidays for you to enjoy the most spectacular places on earth… as long as there is a swimming pool and massages and all kinds of treatments.

The beauty industry is based on an image that was created by the industry itself. For example, companies that sell pills and diets for people getting slimmer, present slimmer bodies as an ideal body. If you look at the paintings in Art Museums, we see women posing as models who today could be considered “fat”. However, you do not see many “old” women with wrinkles, so skin care companies may be right to want to eliminate wrinkles on the faces of modern women. As for men, the ideal image still stands: strong, powerful, and wealthy (regardless of how ugly and old they might be). Yet, some decades ago, the beauty industry thought it was a good idea to help men in such a quest (and make men less fat, less ugly and less old, just in case).

3.
We aim to be perfect and we aim to achieve perfection. Perfection is the ideal solution, the benchmark against which all other possible solutions are compared. Sometimes perfection is unattainable, but when it is achieved it is considered a “beauty”. In truth, it does not have to be perfect (but almost) to be considered a beauty: a beautiful music, a beautiful mathematical equation, a beautiful gourmet meal, a beautiful archive, a beautiful book, a beautiful adventure. In some fields, excellence is generally recognized the same way, like in sport, but in others fields it depends on each one’s perception. For example, a person can consider that a living room totally white (walls and furniture) with very few objects is excellent, and the person living in the apartment next door may think that warm colours, wood furniture and a lot of objects are what makes a perfect living room.

 

Keyword: HAPPINESS | Women’s happiness

It is generally believed that happiness for women is to get married. Or better yet, to fall in love and then get married. This usually means that single women are miserable and are desperately looking for a man to love them. However, many married women (or not married, but in love with a man) are miserable and some single women are very happy with their lives and have no plans of changing such a status. Against this fact, the argument is invariably the same: happy single women are just pretending they are happy; deep inside they are eager to find someone to love them. So, no matter where the conversation begins, it always ends in the same place. It’s exhausting, really. Obviously, this question doesn’t apply to men. In fact, single men are often seen as people who are enjoying life, who are free and careless, especially the successful and rich ones. Apparently, they have no need for love. They can have all the women they want and that’s good enough for them. Only women have a (pathological) need for it, it seems.

Instead of considering that happiness is different for women and men, maybe we should consider that happiness is just different from person to person, regardless of being a man or a woman. Some people need to be loved to be happy and some people are happy with their jobs. Some people want to have children and others don’t. Some people want to get married and others don’t. Some people love to travel and change scenery every chance they get, others like to stay put, maybe having a holiday home. All this, regardless of being a woman or a man.

Happiness is when what it should be equals the reality of what is. In other words, it’s when everything goes well. This is different from those situations when apparently all goes well, but you have a feeling that something is wrong. We tend to ignore that feeling because rationally we think we shouldn’t feel like that. We live as there is a guide on how to live and how to be happy. And now there are apps that set goals for us and tell us how to achieve those goals. Instead of actually living life as it is, we spent our time trying to live the life we are supposed to live.

This is not just in our personal life, but also in our professional life. Especially now, with Chief Happiness Officers controlling people’s “well-being”. They make sure workers are feeling excited about the projects they are involved in, they enjoy the food and drinks provided for free by the employer, they go to office parties and don’t miss the team building workshops, the mindfulness sessions, and the sports events organised by the company. In some organisations, like Google, they even have a playground so people can relax during office hours and have fun. “Fun” is the key word. People are forced to have fun everywhere, smile all the time and show enthusiasm about everything. It’s stressful and exhausting.

Then, in their (rare) spare time, people are almost forced to show themselves having fun on social media: dinners with friends, idyllic weekends with lovers, luxurious holidays abroad. Besides, buying expensive objects is perceived as highlights of happiness. Every day, we are bombarded by ways of spending money and wealthy people are seen as examples to follow. Therefore, the plan is: getting a highly paid job in order to have enough money to spend it on all the things mentioned. Relationships with other people are like products to be consumed or theatrical stages to show off one’s wealth. Being admired is mistaken for being happy.

Expectations are also at the root of happiness (or unhappiness). We create many expectations about our lives, our jobs, our families, our friends. Partly, these expectations come from the “guide” about how to live and what to buy. Adverts show happy families (or happy young people) buying stuff and living in luxury as saying: “this is the happy life; this is your goal”. The expectation is, thus, if we buy that product, it will make us happy just like those people in the adverts. Experiences are the next level of this idea. It is not enough to buy a car; we now need to buy an adventurous car. It is not enough to go to the gym; we need to pay a personal trainer and sign up in triathlon and marathon events. It is not enough to travel abroad; we need to go to an exotic country and have an adventure. Always something more, always more exclusive, always more expensive.

For women, additional pressure comes from the expectation to become mothers. Drama can set in when women who want children have trouble getting pregnant. Fertility treatments, which are presented as an alternative, are painful, expensive, and draining. Draining for women and draining for their husbands or partners. And can drag on for years; more than one treatment may be needed. When they finally become mothers, the pressure is on for them to be “perfect moms”, whatever that means. They are considered “lucky” if they have the help of their husbands or partners, but still the responsibility on their shoulders is enormous.

All in the name of happiness. Is it worth it? Perhaps. Some people do find happiness in the middle of this chaos. Others just pretend (following the motto “fake it until you make it”). The truth is there are no rules to be happy. We made up rules to deceive ourselves or to help us cope with sadness and suffering. Thinking positive has its benefits, but, if its main objective is to ignore negative feelings, then it can be pointless. “Bad” feelings need to be felt alongside the “good” feelings. That’s how we see the difference. Sometimes they are intertwined. As the saying goes: «good things can come from bad situations». And vice-versa.

 

Keyword: HAPPINESS | The meaning of happiness

In the early 1990’s, after graduating, Christopher McCandless rejected society, gave his money away, and went to live in nature from what nature could provide. He wanted to be happy and isolated himself to go and look for it. Jon Krakauer wrote his story in the book “Into the Wild”, which was adapted to cinema by Sean Penn. Sadly, Christopher was found dead four months after he had settled in an abandoned bus in the middle of Alaska wilderness. He died alone. At the time, he had had no contact with anyone for a long time. In the diary he was writing, there was an interesting quote: “Happiness is only real when shared.”

This quote goes against the current neoliberal concept of happiness, which is extensively analysed in the book “Happycracy – How the science of happiness controls our lives”. At the beginning of the book, the authors Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz made use of the film “The Pursuit of Happyness”, starring Will Smith, to introduce such a definition. The film is based on Christopher Gardner’s true story, who was broken and homeless with a small child in his charge. Due to his determination, resilience, and optimism, he became a successful broker and a rich man with the help of nobody. Now, he is also a motivational speaker, sharing his experience and helping others to achieve the same as him. He is one of several motivational speakers and coaches that instruct people on what to do to become rich and happy. As happiness has become more important in society, the number of these professionals have increased in recent years. Currently, happiness is seen as individual-driven, the sole responsibility of each person, and disconnected from any social or economic circumstance. Yet, Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz emphasized the irony of how a man like Christopher Gardner, who “made it” alone, is now helping others achieve success in life.

Interestingly, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is seen as a self-made man that moved to USA to achieve the so called “American dream”, recently wrote a book stating that success (and happiness) stems from being useful to others and having a purpose in life. In order to achieve our goals, people need the help of others and should give something back in return. Of course, ultimately it is up to each individual to achieve their own goals, but the underlying idea is that each individual is part of a community. Therefore, “making it” by yourself and alone, like Christopher Gardner did, it’s quite unusual.

The book “Happycracy” concludes that the current obsession with happiness has fed a very lucrative industry (or the other way around). National policies and management guidelines are now aligned to “positive psychology”, forcing people to be happy all the time and, in a way, blaming them if they aren’t. In some cases, managers argue that companies should only hire happy people and fire those who are not because happy people are more productive and resilient. Resilient to toxic cultures, for example, while remaining productive during the many hours overtime, they need to work to do “more with less”.

Every year the ranking of countries by life evaluations, included in the World Happiness Report, is announced in the media. It is based on «individuals’ own assessments of their lives», as said on the website. This means that it is highly subjective and relies solely on people’s perception: what seems very good for some, can feel very bad for others. Furthermore, people can respond according to what is expected rather than what they really feel. It is no coincidence that the top countries are the wealthiest in the world. There is a general perception that money brings happiness, thus, living in a wealthy country will mean being happy.

According to Edgar Cabanas and Eva IIlouz, the science behind the studies on happiness is faulty and can lead to wrong conclusions. The indicators based on happiness ignore economic and social indicators which directly influence people’s lives and can also influence their perception of what happiness is. For example, the wealthiest countries are the countries with the greatest social and economic inequalities. So, being poor in a wealthy country means being happy whereas being poor in a poor country means being unhappy? In reality, in the wealthiest countries, “happiness” increasingly means to isolate oneself: you can walk listing to music and disconnect from the world around you, you can practice meditation and mindfulness to look inside yourself, you can buy books and courses to learn the techniques to improve yourself and overcome the obstacles and the difficulties that make you unhappy. However, despite all of this, people are getting more and more unhappy and depressed. So, maybe this is not the path to true happiness.

Britannia states that «happiness, in psychology, is a state of emotional well-being that a person experiences either in a narrow sense, when good things happen in a specific moment, or more broadly, as a positive evaluation of one’s life and accomplishments overall—that is, subjective well-being». So, forget about isolating yourself via technology, always pursuing something unattainable, living in permanent dissatisfaction. Happiness is nothing like that, it’s much simpler: if you feel good and feel like smiling, then you’re happy. It could be about a specific thing or a specific memory, or it can be a general feeling about your life. Of course, you can fake it, you can just think you are happy, or you can convince yourself that you are. Usually, in these cases, you can keep it to yourself. However, if it is a true feeling of happiness, you want to share it with other people. You have the tools to distinguish the difference: don’t think and don’t analyse, just feel.

 

Keyword: WAR | Women in war

War is no place for women. There is too much violence and terror. Women should be protected and stay at home where it is safe, patiently waiting for men to return while taking care of the children. Except… “at home”, they are left to be raped my enemy troops, bombed by enemy planes, expelled from their houses by enemy invaders. Violence and terror are unavoidable, unless war is thousands of kilometres away. In this case, apprehension takes over and women live in constant anxiety. Better to do something. That is why they prepare the defences of the places where they live, they go to work the fields and feed themselves and their children (and also sending supplies to the troops); they replace men in factories (especially of weapons and ammunition); they take care of their husbands’ businesses; they fundraise money to send to the army. Others enlist as nurses, as spies, as members of the resistance, as code breakers, as strategists *.

War is no place for women. John Keegan, an English historian and Professor in the Military Academy, stated that “women (…) do not fight” and that “warfare (…) is an entirely masculine activity”. John Keegan forgot (or was totally unaware) about the many women who disguised themselves as men to go to (probably) all battles that were ever fought. There are some records of this, but many remain hidden in history. John Keegan also forgot (or was totally unaware) about women like Queen Boudicca, who led her people in the fight (and beating) the Romans; the emperor’s consort Lady Fu Hao, who successfully commanded an entire army and conquered many lands; Queen Nzinga Mbande, who fought (and having some success) the Portuguese colonialism; and the university student Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who is still the most accomplished female sniper (having killed 309 Nazis). This is just to name a few **. Men with John Keegan’s mentality have been doing research on history and archaeology, deliberately preventing women from contributing. So, when a DNA test was made on a Viking’s skeleton, who everyone assumed was a male warrior, and it was discovered to be a skeleton of a female warrior no one could believe it. Surprise, surprise.

War is no place for women. Nowadays, there are 11 countries in the world where military service is mandatory for women (as well as for men): Benin, Cape Verde, Eritrea, Israel, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, North Korea, Norway, Sweden, and Tunisia. Denmark will soon be part of this list. Many other countries accept women in their armed forces as volunteers. Thus, today there are many generals, military engineers, commanders of Navy ships, Army troops, and Air Force squadrons, military nurses and military doctors who are women. There are even female snipers and submarine crew female members. This time, all official and duly registered.

War is no place for women. In a conversation with the military historian Margaret MacMillan, the writer Sarah Hall realized that “women’s exclusions from armies and from institutions are commonplace, but they are also excised from historical documentation and artistic representation”. It’s as if women are not allowed to write about war, whether it’s imposed by men or self-imposed. Margaret MacMillan ignored men who were trying to belittle her and wrote many books about war. Born right after World War II, Svetlana Alexievich had heard about war since a little child. War was everywhere, but little was being said about the one million women who fought alongside men in the Soviet Army. Thus, Svetlana Alexievich, as a journalist, decided to write the book “The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II”, a collection of stories directly told by Soviet women who fought in World War II. More recently, a former USA trooper who served in Iraq, Brian Van Reet, chose a woman to be the protagonist of his book “Spoils”, where he describes, in a fictional story, the true horror of the war.

War is no place for women. Our society still sees women as “vulnerable”, “non-violent”, and only going to war as part of the “resistance” or to carry out “auxiliary jobs”. If we look closely, the narrative about women in war is often about how they sacrifice their motherhood, leaving their children behind, and how they stop feeling “feminine” as in becoming cold with their boyfriends or husbands. Or remaining unmarried, the horror. Men also have children and also leave them behind. Men also miss their families. Men also become cold with their girlfriends or wives when they return home due to the terrible things they have witnessed. But men are heroes whereas women are not even mentioned. The job is the same, the horror is the same, the consequences are the same to both men and women. Both men and women have to learn how to kill, learn the tactics of war, learn how to work with each other to avoid dying. The training is the same. But men are seen as more capable than women, regardless of the fact that women have proven over and over again that they are perfectly able to do the same as men. On the other hand, there are also pacifists among men. When military service is mandatory, there are always many men who try to escape it. And, as you read above, when women can’t be accepted, they disguise as men to take the place of those men who are escaping it.

War is no place for women. Yeah, right.

 

* Watch the documentary “War Gamers” on how a group of women found the way to beat the U-Boot strategy, turning the tables in the Battle of the Atlantic.

** Check the extensive lists of women in ancient warfare, women in warfare (1500–1699), women in 18th-century warfare, women in warfare and the military in the 19th century, women in warfare and the military (1900–1945), women in World War I, women in World War II, women in warfare and the military (1945–1999), and women in warfare and the military (2000–present).

Also…
. Read and watch the video at the end of the page about what happened to British women during the World War I: “12 Things You Didn’t Know About Women In The First World War”

 

Keyword: WAR | War’s Propaganda

In 1622, the Sacred Congregation for Propagation of the Faith (known as Propaganda), was established to regulate the work of missionaries. Their mission was to spread the word of the (Catholic) Lord to the entire world. It was not always peaceful and the word was sometimes more imposed than spread. The term Propaganda evolved to mean “the spreading of ideas, information, or rumour for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person”. Nowadays, it pretty much means making people believe in ideas or false information for a certain purpose. The difference between propaganda and marketing (or advertising) is the aim. The first aims to make people believe in governmental lies for political purposes, the second aims to make people believe they need to buy products or acquire services they don’t really need.

War is an especially fertile ground for propaganda. Governments need to make people believe that war is absolutely necessary and, thus, they twist the facts or simply lie about them. Arthur Ponson was a Member of Parliament in Great Britain and he was one of the few who stood against the participation of his country in World War I. In truth, he spent his life advocating for peace and he was even physically and psychologically attacked because of it. In 1928, he published the book “Falsehood in War-time”, where he stated at the beginning of the introduction:

      Falsehood is a recognized and extremely useful weapon in warfare, and every country uses it quite deliberately to deceive its own people, to attract neutrals, and to mislead the enemy. The ignorant and innocent masses in each country are unaware at the time that they are being misled, and when it is all over only here and there are the falsehoods discovered and exposed. As it is all past history and the desired effect has been produced by the stories and statements, no one troubles to investigate the facts and establish the truth.

In this book, Arthur Ponson exposes the lies told by governments during the World War I. Based on this, in 2001, Anne Morelli summarized his work and published the book “The Basic Principles of War Propaganda” *. She explains each Principle and gives examples from other wars that took place after World War I, showing that the same techniques are still used today. This is also confirmed in a documentary from Spiegel TV called “Fake War”, under the perspective of the use of mass media in war propaganda. The first episode is about World War I and mentions some of the false events described by Arthur Ponson.

Before World War I began, photography was used to complement articles published in newspapers. Film, which had been discovered by the end of the 19th century, was also used for the first time for propaganda purposes. Staged scenes of atrocities carried out by the enemy served Principle #3, showing the enemy as evil and full of heartless creatures. It also prepared the population for war. In fact, the British Government had created the first (secret) propaganda department with the aim of conveying false information in a way that looked objective and true. The target was the Germans and the Germans failed to properly respond to this campaign. However, years later, the Nazis took propaganda to another level. Inspired by the corporation advertising, the Minister of Propaganda conceived a coordinated plan using newspapers, photography, radio and film to influence the minds of the German population (they also tried to influence foreign countries, but failed), feeding them with lies and manipulating their thinking.

In the Vietnam War, the situation was reversed. There were no restrictions on journalists’ movements and there was not any kind of governmental censorship. This did not mean that the USA Government had given up on official propaganda. By this time, television was widespread throughout the world and journalists were no longer limited to written articles, outdated photos, and staged films. The problem was that the lies conveyed in official statements were being systematically debunked on a daily basis by the images that were shown on television and by the photographs that were published in newspapers. The discrepancy between these images and the official statements was considerable, which resulted in huge demonstrations and protests in the USA.

This was a lesson that the USA learned very well. In the Gulf War and in the Iraq War journalists were no longer authorized to go to the front line and they had no information on what was actually happening. This time, all the Principles were successfully applied. Both the general public and the journalists were fed with lies they could not dispute. Therefore, the war looked perfectly justifiable. It was only later, when the USA finally left Iraq, that journalists were made aware of the consequences of the US invasion and all the atrocities committed.

The Internet, especially social media, is making it increasingly difficult to control information. Yet, it is also making it increasingly easier to spread false information. Nowadays, propaganda is more than ever being confused with authentic information, even when it is proven to be false. Furthermore, there is this idea that propaganda is something that is only produced by the other side. People from “the other side” are the ones who are being brainwashed. Those in “our side” who disagree with what is said about the other side are liars and traitors. If we look closely, this is Principle #10.

As Aeschylus, the Greek and so-called father of tragedy, said: “in war, truth is the first casualty”.

 

* The 10 Principles are:
1. We do not want war.
2. The opposite party alone is guilty of war.
3. The enemy is inherently evil and resembles the devil.
4. We defend a noble cause, not our own interests.
5. The enemy commits atrocities on purpose; our mishaps are involuntary.
6. The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
7. We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
8. Recognized artists and intellectuals back our cause.
9. Our cause is sacred.
10. All who doubt our propaganda are traitors.

 

Keyword: WORK | The role of women in society

At some point in human history, the role of women in society became bearing children. Of course, this was disguised in many ways. For example, as the dream of every woman to marry the Prince Charming and be happily ever after (with a bunch of kids, naturally). Or as the idea that every woman’s happiest day was when they would get married and start a family (and be pregnant as often as possible). Women who wouldn’t get married were spinsters or promiscuous, the kind no man would ever want. These women would be excluded from society and duly ignored. Or made fun of, as we can read in Jane Austen’s books. Married women with no children wouldn’t have their lives easier either, as a matter of fact. They were seen as having some kind of defect. “Real” complete women were those who got married and had children. Obviously, this is wrong. Women don’t need to get married and have children to be complete. They are born complete. As do men.

Try as they may, men never fully succeeded in selling this lie to all women. Most women bought it, it’s true, and many still do nowadays. However, working women (single or married, with or without children) have always been a reality throughout history. For example, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653) was a famous Renaissance painter. Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) found how butterflies were born (male scientists before her thought butterflies would magically appear in nature out of nowhere). Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was the first ever computer programmer (yes, the first programmer was a woman, not a man). Dorothy Garrod (1892-1968) was the archaeologist who found evidence of the first farming people and made other groundbreaking discoveries.

True, only women can have children, but this fact should not be a reason to restrict women to just one role in society. It should not be a reason to treat women as merchandise either, giving men the “right” to make them marry whoever they might think fit. All in the name of future heirs. Male heirs, that is. Women are much more than that. They have brains and courage and are capable of extraordinary things, whether they are allowed or not.

When World War II broke up, men were eager to join the military to fight (on both sides). At the time, men would see women as “weak” and “in need of protection”, but they didn’t have any problem leaving women alone during a very dark and dangerous time. Alone and with no livelihood resources to support themselves and their children. Plus, men left their countries without anyone to make the economy work. Thus, it is hardly surprising that women decided to step in. Many found their place in war, despite not being allowed to fight. They were nurses, spies, entertainers, translators, secretaries, code breakers, strategists. Those who were “left behind” proved they were neither defenceless nor incapable of doing a “man’s job”: they became farmers, factory workers, administrators, members of the Resistance. They kept the economy working and made sure provisions of all kinds would reach the troops in the front line. Once men were back, broken and defeated (even those on the winning side), they realized that women not only had found ways to sustain themselves and their children, but had thrived in places where only men were previously allowed. Good luck in trying to convince women to go back being just bearers of children.

Yet, men tried, even to this day. Working women are constantly seen as “bad mothers” because they supposedly neglect their children. In addition, women who wish to further their professional careers are often seen as bossy and aggressive while men are seen as ambitious and driven. Women who don’t want children are (still) seen as abnormal and those who don’t want to marry have “their priorities mixed up”. Children are presumably more important than work only to women, never to men. In interviews, actresses and female writers are much more likely to be asked about their families than actors and male writers. It’s like women couldn’t stand alone without a husband or children, while for men that is not remotely important for their professions.

Women have always been able to stand by themselves. Each year we learn more and more stories of extraordinary women who broke the mould. Since the beginning of human history, women have been mothers and wives, but also property owners, business people, queens and administrators, artists and scientists, explorers and farmers, writers and sportspeople. Women have been everywhere and they have been doing everything. There are those who are competent and those who aren’t, just like men. So, maybe those extraordinary women didn’t break the mold. Maybe there was no mold, just prejudices. Keeping women out of the labour market is as senseless as it is useless. They will always find a way to get there, not because they challenge the system, but because it’s their natural place. It takes more effort to keep them out than to embrace their input. Women can further society the same way as men, not because they are “caring” or “peacemakers”, but because they are as smart and competent as men.

 

Keyword: WORK | The purpose of work

In his book “Work: A History of How We Spent Our Time”, James Suzman starts by defining what work is. He goes back and forth, discussing different angles, and comes to the conclusion that “work” is every activity living beings (humans, animals, plants, and fungi) do, for which they need energy. This means that, under this definition, what some people consider “leisure” is actually “work” (in fact, the same activity can be considered “leisure” by some and “work” by others).

According to James Suzman, the concept of “leisure” was born when humans learned how to master fire and they found time to spare between hunting and recollecting food. Instead of “doing nothing”, they dedicated themselves to painting, building tools, and creating accessories (like necklaces). This means that, just like other animals, plants, and fungi, humans have the compulsory need to be engaged in some kind of activity. Once the energy intake is secure, imagination is the limit of what one could do.

As imagination evolved, so did the number of activities and their complexity. After figuring out how to plant and master crops, everything changed. Humans were now able to store “energy” to consume later, which gave them even more time without being worried about hunting and recollecting. They began to plan yearly: there was a time to sow, a time to let crops grow (controlling pests and the like), and a time to harvest. Then, during winter, as humans didn’t hibernate, they were “free” to do what they liked. Usually that meant making big constructions (like Stonehenge, for example). For these purposes, communities were needed and societies were developed. Hierarchies and specializations were ever more consolidated. Besides, as the agricultural fields were being exhausted, people had to move to other lands. Thus, migration commenced.

Fast-forward to our highly complex and globalized society, in which people move around all the time, we can see where imagination and “free time” has led humanity. People still work to sustain themselves and their families (that haven’t changed) and they still use their free time to do other things they find more interesting (that haven’t changed either). What is changing is the purpose, the meaning of work.

At some point during the Industrial Revolution, workers fought for the idea of having 8 hours per day of work, 8 hours of free time (to have fun and spend time with the family), and 8 hours of rest (mainly to sleep). It was also believed that the 8 hours of free time was the most important of them all. Hence, the hobbies, the focus on the family, the holidays and day outs. People would work to make money to meet the needs of survival, and their compensation was to have fun in their free time.

Now, people are realizing that work is actually more important, that it builds their sense of self. So, it needs to have meaning to themselves and to the community. People relate to work more than it was expected during the Industrial Revolution and having fun after hours is just not enough. Besides, people are working increasingly more hours. The 8-8-8 balance is getting lost (if ever was a reality). As a result, the separation between work life and personal life is also getting lost. In truth, this separation only made sense during the Industrial Revolution, when people went to work in the factories and then went back to “their own life”. With the rise of “flexible working hours” and “working from home” it feels like we are going back in time, when people were developing agriculture and their own life was intertwined with the work they did.

As we can read in James Suzman’s book, developing agriculture throughout thousands of years was hard work filled with much frustration. Farmers would probably have felt they had enough of it many times over during the course of their lifetime. When the Industrial Revolution came, moving to the cities to work in the factories was like a promise of a better life. After all, they wouldn’t depend on climate to have their earnings; they would have a salary at the end of the week or the month. However, this type of work brought with it a number of new problems, and workers had to deal with them in new ways: hence Unions and social fights that are part of history.

Nowadays we have burnouts, stressful objectives to be met, toxic working environments, fierce competition, long hours of work… We are also witnessing the emergence of new ways of work, like: the 4-day work week, remote work, hybrid work. We have an enormous variety of different jobs and the possibility to change jobs. Specializations are not the end of the line. If we think back, before the Industrial Revolution, farmers’ children didn’t have much choice. And whoever started a trade would hardly switch to another trade. Today, there are infinite possibilities (or so it seems).

The future is unforeseeable, although many experts are busy trying to predict it. However, one thing seems to be certain: people need to work, whatever may that turn out to be.
 

Investigation

When reading or watching a crime story we know there is always someone who investigates the crime and, at the very end, solves it. We follow that person’s investigation and sometimes we try to solve the crime before the character. After all, there are clues scattered around and the idea is to build the puzzle piece by piece until we get the big picture. Real police investigations are like that: they follow certain procedures that have been proven to be the best ones to solve the crime. In this case, they also need to gather evidence to put the criminal in jail.

Academic investigation, also known as research, follows certain procedures in order to find new knowledge. In this case, the procedures are different because the purpose is different. Well, sometimes it also involves dead people, if it is an historical or medical research. In pathology, the dead person could have been the victim of a microbe. These microscopic creatures can be truly serial killers.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, an investigation is “the act or process of examining a crime, problem, statement, etc. carefully, especially to discover the truth”. There are two main components at play here: it implies a process and it aims to uncover the truth. Research, according to The Britannica Dictionary, is “careful study that is done to find and report new knowledge about something”. The difference is very thin, but it does exist.

Apparently, the first police department was set by an Egyptian pharaoh in 3000 BCE, but murder is as old as humans. As society evolved, the police methods, forensic science and research methods (especially the scientific method) also evolved and they gradually became the norm to all forms of investigation. We hear that a company is opening an investigation on some wrongdoing, crashes (airplanes, trains, boats) are also being investigated, and banks are investigating financial frauds.

Sometimes, common people do their own little investigations in order to find out the truth in their lives. For example: who ate all the butter? If you don’t have guests in the house, the culprit must be one member of the family. So, you start to gather evidence and ask questions. You establish the timeline of everyone to discover who was the last person to leave the kitchen… Sadly, scientifically identifying the fingertips on the knife is too expensive, so you can only apply empirical methods…

Maybe inspired by this, British crime writers, like Agatha Christie, created a very peculiar sub-genre: cosy mysteries. These stories are characterized to have an amateur detective (or sleuth), who is minding his/her own business until a crime occurs in his/her little village and it’s up to him/her to find out who the culprit is. The main character doesn’t have access to forensics, so he/she only has his/her brains to figure out the solution. In the case of Agatha Christie, she invented a sweet old lady called Miss Marple who is nosy, but lovely.

 

Information

Information is a two-step process. Firstly, data is collected. The data has no meaning as it is a list of numbers and/or words. Secondly, data is processed and transformed into information. The way information is created depends on the purpose for which it is created. This means that the exact same data can result in opposite results. It is not a question of denying or dismissing facts, it is a question of choosing the facts and using the wording that best fits the purpose. However, information must always respect the facts and be based on the data that is collected (assuming that the data were correctly collected).

Sometimes, the result is misinformation, which is “incorrect or misleading information”. In this case, the data was incorrectly used. It is a little bit different from disinformation, which is “false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumours) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth”. In this case, the information is not at all based on data, but in lies (or in manipulating information on purpose to make people believe in false information). Fake news is disinformation. That is why nowadays most media use “fact check” tools to verify if the news is based on lies and not on true data/facts.

Then, there is propaganda, which is a specific type of disinformation: “dissemination of information—facts, arguments, rumours, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion”. It may have many different purposes, but usually is related to political motives. Interestingly enough, the term comes from a religious organization aiming to spread the Catholic faith (or better yet, to convince other people that the Catholic faith was better than all other religions). Propaganda sometimes may be confused with advertising (which also aims to convince people of something) as it can use similar techniques.

A new concept is now emerging: information pollution. In today’s digital world, information is overwhelming and, as filters are removed, true information equals false information in so many different channels that people lose their capacity to distinguish between the two. These channels are also full of irrelevant and redundant information that help distract and confuse. The result in the long term is hate speech, disrespect of human rights, and general violence.

António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, stated that “[c]ountering disinformation requires lasting investment in building societal resilience and media and information literacy”. Measures and solutions exist and are available online (just search it on the Internet with “countering disinformation” as key words), but the problem is hard to fight. Knowing this, the United Nations published the report “Countering disinformation for the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms”. In 19 pages, the report explains what disinformation is, what its legal framework is, and how states can tackle it.  

Writer

A writer is someone who writes, but writing is not as easy as it seems. One has to know the language well enough to not make grammar mistakes and one has to know how to organize the ideas in order to build a logical text that its target audience will easily understand.

There are different types of writers. The most noticeable are the authors, those who write books that are published. If the books are not published, they are not authors. However, sometimes “writer” and “author” are used interchangeably. Authors are seen as creators, even when it’s non-fiction, and the term can be applied to other artists. In literature, they can be called novelists, poets, short story writers/authors, playwrights, non-fiction writers/authors. There are also writers who are not recognized as authors, but are published. These are the ghost-writers. Song writers can be considered poets, like Bob Dylan who was awarded the Nobel Prize of Literature in 2016.

Speaking of the Nobel Prize in Literature, there are lots of prestigious (and not so prestigious) literature prizes in the world. There are also national and local prizes, European prizes, bookshop prizes, prizes sponsored by brands that have nothing to do with books. From all of these, the top of the tops, the one every author wants to win, is the Nobel Prize. Then, there are others which are reputation builders: the Pulitzer Prize and the Booker Prize. If you want to keep up with the best in literature, but don’t have much time to check all the prizes, focus on these three.

Actually, the Pulitzer Prize started as a prize to award outstanding journalists; it was later extended to include fictional and non-fictional authors. Journalists, especially newspaper journalists, are another type of writers. Often newspaper journalists become book authors for both fictional and non-fiction books. One of the most well-known is Ernest Hemingway, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Academics can become authors as well, as an extension of their research. Academic research implies a lot of writing. Like journalists, academics aim to investigate a theme and make their discoveries available to the public. The style is different, though. While journalists can write in a more creative and attractive way and they base their writings on sources, academics have to be very rigorous and base their writings on vast bibliography and scientific studies.

Then, there are the bloggers and the content writers, whose mission is to “feed” the internet. Technical writers are responsible for manuals, help guides, instructions, specifications, plans, and similar documents. There are those who write reports and white papers. Copywriters focus on marketing and advertising and screenwriters are those who give the lines to the characters in films and TV series.

A final note for editors and translators: the former use their writing skills to correct and improve the texts others have written and the latter make texts available to speakers of other languages.

 

Alien

For most people in the world, aliens are those little green creatures that may come from Mars, or somewhere else from space. For English speakers, aliens are everyone and everything which is foreign. So, yes, everyone is an alien the minute they leave the country where they were born. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, alien comes from the Latin word (via French) aliēnus, meaning “belonging to another”. Foreign comes from the Latin word (via French) foris, meaning “from outside”.

Both concepts reinforce the idea of “us and the others”. “We” have a certain culture and the “others”, from the outside, have another. That is pretty obvious in the stories of extra-terrestrials. The little green creatures are either violent (they want to dominate the world and exterminate humans) or naïve (they want to understand humans and become one of them). In the latter, the extra- terrestrials are “accepted” only because they value humans’ culture and see it as better than their own.

Naturally, this is not only applied to people from different countries. It is widely known the controversy a member of Buckingham Palace initiated when repeatedly asked a person where she was from and she kept replying she was from London. This can come to a surprise to many people, but it is actually very common in the UK. For the British, everyone who hasn’t had a family that has been born in the UK since the beginning of time is a foreign and they will always be, regardless of how long they have been living in the UK. There are British people and there are aliens. Both don’t mix.

On a larger or smaller scale, this happens in all countries that used to have an empire and had colonized other countries. They “dominated” the aliens… or they were the aliens that invaded those countries to dominate them? In any case, although colonization has ended, there is still a feeling that there are those who were the colonizers and those who were colonized. Of course, theoretically at least, everyone is equal now and everyone is trying to get along, living side by side as if nothing had happened. However, this is not working very well.

Yet, there could be aliens among people from the same country. Like in the movies, when aliens take a human body and possess it, there are also fellow countrymen that belong to another culture. This can be a different social class, a different subculture, a different regional perspective. Strangeness within can be as real as they were from a different country. Or the strangeness may be even greater because those people should be “like us”. The fact they aren’t can be problematic for some people, especially when aliens are seen as monsters.

 

Evil

Etymologically, evil means everything which is not good: wars, diseases, misfortune, crime, mistreatment, abuses, shortcomings, disabilities, irresponsibility, inconsistency, disloyalty, immorality… ugliness and poverty. You name it. For example, “pretty” is good and “ugly” is evil (but, in truth, pretty people can be evil and ugly people can be good).

When we are little, we are told that there is Good and Evil in the world. Children’s stories are filled with battles where Evil tries to dominate the world, but Good always prevails, even when all seems lost. Good doesn’t want to dominate, only Evil does. Good doesn’t want to fight, it only does it to stop Evil. As we grow up, the stories become reality and the metaphors we’ve learned help us navigate the world. Supposedly, we should aim to do Good and fight Evil whenever we encounter it. However, Evil is smart and seductive and we end up joining the Dark Side most of the time.

Here’s where Evil sometimes takes you to the Dark Side: when it becomes righteous. In the name of Good, people become Evil. Wars are a great example, especially wars in the name of God or, most ironic, in the name of peace. Censorship is another great example: to promote morality and good behaviour, one takes away everyone’s freedoms. The feeling of being superior to others, for whatever reason (race, wealth, high morality, religion, being older, being prettier, being more competitive, being more successful, being smarter…), leads people to belittle others, to dehumanize, to be cruel.

There are many theories and philosophies, stories and points of views, rational justifications and religious beliefs about what is evil and what is good. Some say good can be evil and that evil can sometimes be necessary in order to do good. The concept of “Realpolitik” emerged as a way to explain why sometimes governments pursue “evil things”. It kind of justifies the doing of “necessary evils”, stating that governments have to do what they have to do regardless of ideals, what is right, or the values defended by them.

Basically, the concept of what is evil and what it is not revolves around power. So, to maintain power (“dominance”), people might “have to” resort to Evil. This is not just true to governments, it also applies to individuals. People can become cruel not only to retain power, but also to comply with the norm, especially in institutionalized environments. The “herd mentality” and the crowd psychology demonstrate and study how people can be led to behave in a certain way. Obviously, in the latter, if the behaviour is Good, then it can be a good influence. The problem is to distinguish what is Good and what is Evil and, most importantly, to avoid be influenced by Evil.

Evil is everywhere, but, then again, so it is Good.  

Freedom

Every year on 25th April there is a parade in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, to celebrate the coup d’état that ended dictatorship in 1974. Since then, this day is called Freedom Day and people walk down Freedom Avenue to celebrate Freedom. So, yes, freedom means a lot to Portuguese people, even for those generations who were born in a democratic regime and never witnessed dictatorship (thankfully!).

In a way, everyone knows what freedom is, even if they struggle to define it in words. The Oxford English Dictionary has 15 entries with different examples from different periods of time. Basically, freedom means not having constraints. Portuguese people instinctively understood this on 25th April 1974, when they learned that the military were there to end the highly restrictive regime they were living in.

If you look up the meaning of the word freedom, you will find many different types of freedom and many associated concepts. It is also interesting to note the relationship between freedom and responsibility. As an example, you can read the (small, but meaningful) article of Seth Godin about it. At a time when the far-right is rising again throughout Europe and other parts of the world, it is worth recalling three fundamental types of freedom we all must fight to maintain.

The first is Freedom of Speech, which is the freedom of saying what you want without fear of retaliation, prosecution, or punishment. In the workplace, it is the freedom to state your opinion about the matter being discussed without fear of being devalued just because you are a woman, you are young, you are not part of the privileged group of people who make decisions (and play golf together). It is the freedom of drawing attention from your boss about a procedure that is not working right or it is heading to a disastrous outcome without fear of being fired, being blamed for it, being told not to say anything because that could raise alarms no one wants to be raised. In social life, it is the freedom of talking to your friends about anything without fear of someone outside the group listens and denounces you to the police (and you being arrested for it), your friends stop talking to you because you said something different from everyone else, being marginalized because “you’re weird”. However, as stated in a poster in the 2024 Freedom parade in Portugal, “hate speech is not freedom of speech”, meaning, you are free to say whatever you want as long as you respect other people. Insulting, humiliating, dehumanizing, inciting to violence is not freedom of speech.

The second is Freedom of Press, which is the freedom for journalists to publish or broadcast what they think is important without any kind of censorship or external interference. States or companies (trying to “maximizing profit”, for example) that control what should be published or broadcasted are violating this principle. This doesn’t mean that all pieces should be published or broadcasted. The role of editors is to choose what and in what order should the pieces be published or broadcasted. The violation of the freedom of press is when someone from outside (a politician, a public official, the owner of a company) tries to replace the editor in such a task (or pressures them to do what they want). In addition, journalists should not be threatened or killed because they are doing their job. In conflicts, and especially in wars, journalists are clearly identified precisely because of this. Of course, journalists must have strong evidence (documents and/or reliable sources) to support their information. Releasing information without verifying it first can be considered defamation or lying. This can hurt the reputation of the journalist or the media where they work.

The third is Freedom of Association, which is the freedom of you to associate with whoever you want to discuss something, do something, or defend a cause. It ranges from a simple book club, where a (small or big) group of people come together to talk about books, or a group of friends that gather once a week to play a sport, to an association aiming to do something that can transform society for the better (for example, end poverty, end the mistreatment of animals, end domestic violence, encourage cultural education, encourage sport activity, defend the environment). This includes political parties. In a free country, people have the right to state and defend their opinions and beliefs as long as they respect other people’s views. Democracy is made of a plurality of parties. In a country where some political parties are forbidden, other freedoms such as freedom of speech or freedom of press are compromised as well, for sure.

 

Cartography

Nowadays there are many people who can’t get around in a car without using the GPS. Funny enough, 30 years ago not many people would have heard about Global Positioning Systems. Back in the earliest days, the error between one’s position and the position given by the satellite was big enough to require a series of calculations. Today’s systems do the calculations automatically and way more accurately, so we don’t need to worry about it.

GPS shows where you are, where you want to go, and which route you should take on a map. Today, maps are digitally designed, but mapping is still an art. Cartography (which comes from the French word carte, meaning “map”, and graphy, meaning “draw”) started in prehistoric times. Back then, humans would draw maps on cave walls to determine hunting and fishing grounds. Slowly, the drawing of maps got better and during the Age of Discovery they became essential. Exploring the world in search of raw materials and precious goods has led to an explosion of different maps. These maps were especially used for navigation purposes, but soon geographers were drawing maps reflecting what they were discovering all over the world on land.

Gerardus Mercator was a geographer that lived in the 16th century. He is famous for the Mercator project, which is basically the map we all know and use these days. At the time, it was the most accurate, particularly for navigation purposes. This projection was the result of extensive travelling and many mathematical calculations. Today, this map is contested because it does not respect the true proportionality of continents and countries. For example, Greenland is too big and Africa is smaller than it actually is. Many other projections have been made, especially in the 20th and 21st centuries. One of the most controversial is the Gall–Peters projection, which is a kind of Mercator’s with the right proportionalities.

Google maps have revolutionised maps for the general public because it made them interactive. You can zoom in and zoom out, have different views, analyse different routes. It is not perfectly accurate, but it is enough for people to use it with confidence. Currently, there are many other similar platforms that provide the same services. It now seems that maps are essential for our life: to go from point A to point B, to run on the street, to find the best route, to locate something.

In a globalised world as it is today, it is fundamental that we know the location of the countries, the cities, the villages. In politics and international relations, maps have become crucial to understand the complex relationships between countries, which are limited by their own geography. Although the concept of geopolitics is relatively new, geography has always been important in war (therefore, at some level, in politics, as war is a political matter). The Chinese war general Sun Tzu mentioned it in its book “The Art of War”, which dates from the 5th century.

The idea of mapping the world has expanded to other areas. There are projects to map the ocean and even the universe.

 

Monastery

Today, the need to “disconnect” and to “isolate” from the world is increasingly advertised as the solution for the stress caused by the Internet and social media. Technologies are modifying the way we work, the way we live, and the way we entertain and relax. Going to the countryside and spending some time in an isolated house seems to be the cure for the diseases related to this reality. You can go to a yoga retreat, to a SPA weekend, or to a holiday week with your family. The options are endless.

The idea of isolating oneself from society is not new. Centuries ago, it was applied for those who wished to dedicate themselves to religion. This is true not only to Christianity, but also to other religions like Buddhism, and Hinduism. The concept is the same: monks go to live, permanently or temporarily, in a building in the middle of nowhere to pray, study, and work. “Monk” comes originally from the word monos, which means “alone”. A “monastery” is the place where “monks” live. Originally, it came from the Greek work monazein, which means “to live alone” or a “hermit’s cell”. In a way, monks were “forged” in the idea of being hermits, those who went to live in caves totally alone and without any contact with the outside world. However, in monasteries, monks usually live in a community, although they have their own “cell” where they sleep and spend some time alone, like a bedroom. And celibacy is mandatory.

Monasteries are usually located in idyllic places, surrounded by nature, often on top of mountains. Curiously, the connection between “God” and “nature” is very strong. The top of mountains is considered to be closer to “Heaven”, thus, closer to “God”. And it is true that by being in the middle of nature one is further from the noisy society and it is easier to concentrate on divine matters.

Meditation is regularly practised by Buddhist and Hindu monks whereas Catholic monks pray several times a day. Although a little different, the aim is similar: to detach oneself from earthly matters and give yourself to something beyond oneself. Besides praying/meditating, work is also very important, especially cultivating vegetables and aromatic herbs, cooking, and producing beverages. Delicious desserts, cheeses, bier, and wine are among well-known monks’ creations. They had time to think about it during theology’s breaks. They also had time to copy important books and built distinguished libraries.

Monks are men and live in monasteries. In the case of women, they are called nuns and live in convents. In addition to the same roles as monasteries, convents had another role in society. Before disobedient women were considered hysterical and were locked up in psychiatric institutions by their fathers or husbands, they were locked up in convents and forced to follow a “life of faith” as a solution for their “sins”. Although contact with the outside world was cut, many nuns would become pregnant. Then, they would say it was the Holy Spirit who impregnated them. Yet, the truth was different and sometimes the babies were actually from monks… as monks and nuns would work together many times. All in the name of God.
 

Deceit

Deceit is “an act of keeping the truth hidden, especially to get an advantage” (Cambridge Dictionary). This means that people deceive with a purpose. They want something and think that only by deceiving others will they get what they want. “Hidden the truth” can mean “lying” or “omit”, although some people say that “omitting” is a way of “lying”. There are many reasons for lying or omitting. In fact, deceiving is a daily activity. From little lies (for example, telling someone we meet on the street that we are fine when we are not), to living a double life and lying about it to everyone. Some say that a lie is a lie and it doesn’t matter if it is a little one or a big one. Some say that those who tell little lies are also capable of telling big ones. The truth is: everyone lies.

Treachery is the worst kind of deceit. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, it is the “behaviour in which a person deceives someone who trusts them”. The main difference from a “simple lie” is related to “trust”, that is, you are lying to someone who believes in you, who thinks you are being true and cares about you. For example, if you say you are fine to someone you find on the street, this person doesn’t necessarily trust you or really cares. Treachery is like stabbing someone’s trust. The deceit is more serious and, thus, has more dramatic consequences once revealed. This is valid regarding personal relationships and actions against one’s own country. In the latter, it is called treason and it is considered a crime. Spies deliberately pretend to be someone they are not in order to gain the trust of those who possess the information they need to pass on to the enemies. The enemies, thus, get an advantage they wouldn’t otherwise.

People can betray the trust of other people in other contexts, like in friendship or in love. They can also betray their own principles and values, when they act against what they believe and/or against their own feelings. Sometimes, people even lie to themselves. This means that one can betray themselves knowingly or they can find arguments to justify it (hence, lying). Honesty with oneself and with others is very difficult due to various reasons such as expectations, pressure, fear, politeness, shame, wanting to be accepted or to belong… even feelings of wanting to protect oneself or others.

Another type of deceit is manipulation, which is “to control someone or something in a clever way so that they do what you want them to do” (Cambridge Dictionary). This can be done by distorting the truth so the other person believes in false information and acts accordingly. In this case, it’s not just about deception, but also control. People can manipulate other people, but a State or an Institution can also manipulate a large number of people. In the latter, you can say they are “brainwashing”.

 

Mercantilism

The word “mercantilism” comes from “merchant”, a person who buys goods to resell them. Merchants make money with the profit of the sale (the amount of money that is left from the sale after all expenses related to the buying and selling are paid). Since the beginning of time people have bought goods somewhere in order to resell them somewhere else. The Silk Road is a great example of this, these routes were very slow, very expensive, and full of dangers.

The world changed in the 15th century. Until then, in Europe, the economy was based on feudalism, a system where Lords owned vast agricultural lands and received a rent from the farmers who actually worked those lands. The lands were given by the King, in exchange for some service worthy of them (like becoming Knights, going to war, and being successful). Back then, merchants were considered an inferior class. Like the farmers, they existed only to serve the King and the Lords, to provide them with goods from far away.

The Era of Discovery aimed to expand the land of European Kings and, consequently, expand their wealth. The “mother land” would send people to the lands of the “new world” (the settlers) and the idea was for them to serve the King in a similar way as the Lords. However, they failed to foresee the role of merchants. While they became the intermediaries between the settlers and the King and the Lords, trade routes became less long and less expensive, and maybe a little less dangerous.

Long story short, merchants started to make a lot of money. And with wealth, came power. They organized themselves in guilds and companies, like the Dutch West India Company. These guilds and companies were owned by the State, but they acted as they were independent. Wealth increased exponentially, both for the State and the merchants. This led to a shift in the economy and feudalism gave way to mercantilism. In countries where agriculture was not as important, trading became the core business of society. This is what happened in The Netherlands, and which gave rise to the Dutch Golden Age.

Then, in the 18th century, came the Industrial Revolution and the economy shifted again. Trade was still the main focus, but this time the profits were to go to “capitalists”, people who had capital to invest in factories that would produce goods to be sold. The difference is that these capitalists were individuals and they would “compete” with other individuals/capitalists for the customers whereas in mercantilism, trade was made by the State and there was no competition.

Nowadays, capitalism is still the base of the economy.

 

Tourism

Since the beginning of human settlements people have travelled from settlement to settlement for trade purposes. While doing business, these people would share new cultures, new languages, new views of the world. These merchants lived for travel and would always be on the move. Then, during Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, people started to travel for pleasure. They would go on a “circle”, meaning they would go somewhere and back again. However, these “tours” were only for a selected few.

Somewhere during the Middle Ages, the Grand Tour began to take shape. Members of the upper class got into the habit of travelling through Europe to educate themselves about painting, sculpture and ancient architecture. Each group of people would decide the length of time and the itinerary, often hiring a guide to accompany them. Paris and Italian cities like Venice, Florence, and Rome, were usually part of the trip. Switzerland, especially Geneva, was included in some of the most daring and intrepid journeys.

In the 19th century, due to the development of railways, the price of travel decreased and accessibility increased. This meant that people from the middle class were also able to afford to travel, making the business around tourism to flourish. The tourism industry was born and mass tourism followed. In fact, the travel agencies’ tours are a modern version of the Grand Tour, adapted to a large number of people and very limited in time. Nowadays, you would probably have to do several of these tours to make one old Grand Tour.

Today, many people are keen to distinguish between “tourists” and “travellers”. “Travellers” are those you want to meet people from different countries, who want to immerse themselves in the culture and learn about it. “Tourists” are those who just go and see what is presented to them. In reality, people who did the Grand Tour wanted to learn about art and ancient culture, but they did not wish to immerse themselves in the culture. They were known for criticising the “natives” and would only get along with their countrymen. Pretty much like tourists nowadays.

So, tourism has been around for a long time. It has evolved and now the possibilities are endless. People go touring for all kinds of purposes all over the world. There are pre-defined tours, but you can also plan your own voyage. Different budgets will provide you different trips to different destinations. For the same destination, you can choose different means of transportation, hotels, services. And, if you can afford it (in terms of money and time), you can replay a Grand Tour of your own making.

 

Bank and Banking

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary the word “bank” comes from the Italian word “banca” meaning a table where money was exchanged. In early days of trading (meaning the early days of human settlements), people would exchange goods for goods directly. However, at some point, this became impracticable, especially when dealing with distant settlements. Thus, coins were introduced, which were usually made of gold and/or silver, therefore, their value was calculated based on its material. However, coins were different from place to place and people needed to go to the “banca” to exchange it. This process was very informal and usually performed by merchants, who used to travel a lot.

Then, people found that they needed a place to store their money, a safe place that is. And what safer place was there than the religious temples, guarded by the gods themselves?… Priests were soon lending money to people and robbery started to happen. Things became more serious during the Roman Empire, when buildings were designated especially for storing money and lending money became a common practice. Everyone could lend money and get it back, usually at very high rates. Those who engaged in such activities in small scales were called “usurers”.

During the Medieval Times and Renaissance, Italians consolidated their vocation for trading between themselves and the outside world. At the same time, Kings and Popes (and nobles, too) were increasingly resorting to debt to pay their grand projects. Back then, Italy was not a united country as it is today. The cities were independent and some of them, like Florence, were very rich. Using all their knowledge about trading, exchange of money, and lending, Florentine families, like Bardi and Peruzzi, founded the first official banks. Later, they were completely surpassed by the Medici, who founded what was soon the biggest bank in Europe. At this point, “usurers” were already looked down upon and the word became a bad name.

So, this is how banks of deposit (people needed to store money in a safe place) and exchange banks (people needed to change coins to pay for goods in other places) came to be. Banking activity came about with the necessity of people to get loans to pay for their projects in advance.

 
For more information about the history of banking:

 

Revolution

Probably the most well-known revolution is the French Revolution. This revolution was, in fact, a symbol of the collapse of the feudal system that took place throughout Europe at the time. The date of 14th July 1789 is usually referred to as the date of this revolution, but, in truth, the revolution began before that and ended much later, about ten years later or so. Can you pinpoint a precise date for a revolution? No, you cannot. In this case, the 14th July 1789 was actually the Storming of the Bastille, when the people that were fighting on the streets suddenly entered into the Bastille, which was a political prison at the time. Today is commemorated as the National Day in France.

A Revolution is, in fact, a long process that completely transforms society. In the case above, the feudal system was abolished and the monarchy ended, together with many other profound changes that occurred at the same time. This is different from a revolt, which is “to renounce allegiance or subjection (as to a government)” (Merriam-Webster dictionary). A revolt, or an insurrection, lasts less than a revolution and aims to a certain goal. It can succeed or fail when changing something specific. Some revolts could become revolutions (like the French Revolution, which began as a revolt, or several revolts, and grew until it turned into a real revolution), or at least they can have such a goal. If they fail in becoming a revolution, they are just revolts.

Revolts imply violence, but revolutions may not. For example, the Digital Revolution, which refers to the undergoing changes in today’s society from analogical and mechanical technologies to digital technologies, is not violent. Due to new technologies, the way we live, work, and are entertained is getting profoundly different little by little.

Then, there are specific types of revolts that can have certain names depending on the context. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

  • “REBELLION implies an open formidable resistance that is often unsuccessful.”
  • “UPRISING implies a brief, limited, and often immediately ineffective rebellion.”
  • “MUTINY applies to group insubordination or insurrection especially against naval authority.”

 

Snow

For people who live in countries where there is not much snow or none at all, there is only snow and ice. Maybe we can add “frost”, the ice that forms in the early morning and usually damages crops. However, for people who live in “frozen” countries, recognizing different types of snow can be a question of life and death, literally. Therefore, people who live in countries like Greenland or within the Arctic Circle, have many more words for snow and ice, most of them may not even have a direct translation in other languages.

Snow is “rain” when temperatures are below the freezing point (0ºC). If there is no moisture, there is no snow, even when temperatures are really low. For example, in Antarctica, there are vast spaces called Death Valleys where there is no moisture, therefore, no matter how low the temperature is, there is no snow, ever. The level of moisture determines the type of snow and, ultimately, how dangerous it is. The temperature also influences as the ice crystals form differently under different temperatures. This is also true for ice, which, in a way, is a form of snow. Or better yet, snow is a form of ice. The difference is that snow is formed in air (hence, “frozen rain”) and ice is formed on the ground.

However, it is not only the level of moisture and temperature that determine the type of snow. There is also the snow that accumulates on the ground and then melts and then freezes again (hard-packed snow). The best snow for skiing is the snow that has just fallen when the weather is dry, but cold enough to freeze water (powder snow). Then, there are the types of snow that are more than one year old, but are still loose enough for skiing (firn snow). When this type of snow consolidates, it forms a glacier. Wet snow is a snow that is heavy with water, the best one for building snowmen. Drift snow is the snow that is “transported” by the wind and can cause avalanches.

 
Well, this is a very extensive subject. For more information, you can start by reading:

 

Folklore

The word “folklore” is a composition of two words: “folk”, which means “people” and “lore”, which means “knowledge”. Together they mean “the knowledge of the people”. In other words, folklore is the collection of all stories, music, rituals, traditions, and other cultural material that is informally passed from generation to generation in a certain region or within a certain people. A people’s identity is based on its folklore, which gives them a sense of belonging.

In Ireland, for example, folklore is deeply embedded in Irish identity. Although Celtics were spread all over Europe, Ireland is one of the regions where their culture remained, with roots that still feed the entire society. The Irish language, also known as Gaelic (the name of the Celtic branch that was settled in Ireland), is a Celtic language, the tradition of storytelling comes from the Celtic oral tradition, and the almost compulsory requirement for coming together to sing, dance, and play games was a Celtic custom.

Storytelling was crucial in a time when writing was not an option and there was a need to tell the great deeds of their ancestors. Nowadays, we can read what has passed in history books, which is written in a purely informative fashion. Back then, if the deeds were told in the same manner, those listening to it would not pay any attention. Besides, it would be very difficult to memorise everything. Therefore, stories were built, most of them based on mythology. This was also a good way to convey values, beliefs, and teachings. Today, this tradition is still prevalent and it results in amazing writers, poets, and playwrights.

After fighting wars and after the hard work in farms, Celtics would come together to have fun and relax. Music was extremely important to such a purpose, which would inevitably lead to a lot of singing and dancing. Celtics developed a very unique style, which everyone can identify today. Due to this tradition, it is still much alive, all Irish are in touch with these arts since their infancy and they start practicing them from a very early age, formally or informally. This leads to many professional actors, dancers, and musicians.

Sports were also very important as they were part of war training. It was a great way to keep fit and to train how best to beat the enemy… or defend the community. Celtics had their own games that are still played nowadays, with fierce competitions all over the country.

Rituals were also significant as they would determine the rules of living in community, hence the role of religion. Before Christianity arrived in Ireland, Irish people had their own religion, strongly related to nature and the seasons. For example, they would celebrate the arrival of spring, which established the beginning of sowing, and the harvest in autumn. These festivals, especially the harvest festivals, are still celebrated today.

Christianity was very well received in Ireland. Contrary to what happened in other regions in the world, the Roman Catholic Church did not erase the native culture to impose itself. Instead, the Catholic Church and the Celtic culture merged. Some rituals were replaced, but traditions such as storytelling, games, music, and dancing were kept. Nowadays, you find that Irish people are deeply Catholic and believe in Celtic mythology to the full.

 

Empire

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, an empire is “a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority”. It comes from the Latin word imperium, meaning «“authority over family members and slaves exercised by the head of a household, supreme administrative authority, dominion, power exercised by a Roman emperor”, from imperāre “to give orders, exercise authority, hold political power” + -ium, deverbal suffix of function or state».

The Roman Empire was the second empire to exist in the world (the first was the Akkadian Empire), but it was one of the most effective. Starting as a Republic (from the Latin res publica, literally meaning “the thing of the people”), Rome was an independent city-state founded on top of a hill.

Battles with the neighbours were frequent. Julius Caesar, with his immeasurable ambition, became a member of the senate and an army commander, conquering many lands for the Republic. One day, he returned to Rome, but decided to take a legion with him, which was forbidden. The Rubicon River bounded the Italian domains within the Empire. Those who crossed it commanding an army were considered traitors and were sentenced to death. Julius Caesar knew this and he knew he could not go back on his decision after crossing the river. And so, the expression “crossing the Rubicon” (meaning “passing the point of no return”) was born. Julius Caesar crossed the river and civil war began. He took power and became a dictator. He was a dictator only for a few days… until he was murdered.

After some turbulent times, Gaius Octavius, the adoptive son of Julius Caesar, took the power and became the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. He named himself as Augustus, the Latin word for “majestic” or “great”. He also adopted his father’s name, Caesar. From then on, although it was not written as law, it became tradition for sons to succeed their fathers and be named as Caesar, like the “founder”. This denomination stuck and evolved to “czar” in Russia.

However, this was not the only legacy they left us. Buildings, roads, bridges are still there to be admired or used throughout Europe, Middle East, and North Africa. Many languages evolved from Latin, like French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, and there are still Latin expressions in use (like status quo, alter ego, de jure, per capita, and vice versa, among many others). And speaking about Latin expressions, the law is full of them, partly because the current juridical system was based on the Roman one. Of course, we must not forget that the official names of plants and animals are also in Latin.

The Roman Empire, as such, ended in the 4th century. Since then, many other empires were born and died. Together with tales of grandeur, there are tales of atrocities and attempts to annihilate other cultures. For better or worse, empires change the territories they govern, but their end is certain.
 

SPA

It is generally believed (in what it was, in fact, a promotional strategy) that SPA would come from the Latin expression Sanitas Per Aqua [health through water]. This is actually wrong. Spa is the name of a city in Belgium, known for its mineral water springs. However, those who love names that come from Latin will be happy to know that the name of this town was probably given by the Romans: sparsa fontana [scattered fountain].

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, SPA is «a mineral spring; a resort with mineral springs; a fashionable resort or hotel; (…) a commercial establishment providing facilities devoted especially to health, fitness, weight loss, beauty, and relaxation; a hot tub with a whirlpool device». This dictionary also mentions that the first time SPA was used with this meaning was in 1610.

So, a SPA was originally a mineral water springs resort, a place where sick people would go to heal. Healing was made by drinking or bathing in the waters of that place, which possessed special and unique characteristics, beneficial to health.

Romans were known for their love for public baths, where they would socialize and take care of their health. When spreading their empire throughout Europe, they were the first to find the best thermal spots. Since then, people have not stopped seeking such healing places. Probably the one in Spa, Belgium, was the most famous at the time and “mineral water springs resort” became “SPA”, after the town.

Nowadays, the concept of SPA does not differ much from the Roman concept. It is not just for sick people, but for all those who want to stay healthy and fit. Indeed, some Roman facilities would include gyms, like today’s SPAs. Although SPAs may not include water, the majority has at least a swimming pool. And, of course, just like in Romans’ time, people can socialize and relax together, with all kinds of social and entertainment activities included.

In 2021, to honour and emphasise the importance of SPAs in Europe, UNESCO decided to turn into World Heritage 11 towns specially known for their mineral water springs: the Great Spa Towns of Europe. After extensive research, the list is now composed of cities from Austria (1), Belgium (1, which is Spa), Czech Republic (3), France (1), Germany (3), Italy (1), and the United Kingdom (1).
 

Nomad

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a nomad is «a member of a people who have no fixed residence but move from place to place usually seasonally and within a well-defined territory». This concept applies, for example, to Bedouins, people that live in the desert, and Mongolians. The main reason why they move from place to place is because they herd animals (especially camels, in the case of Bedouins, and horses, in the case of Mongolians).

Nomads should not be confused with the merchants that used to cross the desert with goods to be sold on the other side. These caravans were very popular in the old days of the silk route and also in the Sahara Desert (think about the typical image of camels in line, full of goods attached to their back). While caravan merchants would go from one city to another, nomads would stay in the same place for a certain period of time, living in tents in the meantime.

Digital nomads modernised this concept. They too move from place to place and stay there for a certain period of time. However, instead of herding animals, they use technology to work remotely. And they do not usually live in tents, but in rented houses, although there are no rules in this respect. In fact, there are those who buy a camper van (brand new or an old one that they rebuild as they please) and literally move their house around.

The concept somehow expanded to also mean someone who roams without a purpose or a destination. However, this is different from a vagabond. A vagabond is someone who has no money, no professional occupation, and no place to live (they usually live on the street). Nomads have money and a profession, thus, they can pay for accommodation and supplies.

Being a nomad is not for everyone… but, then again, being in the same place doing the same things with the same people is not for everyone either. Before technology, people did not have much choice. If you were born into a nomad family, you would become a nomad, and if you were born, let’s say, in a farm, you would become a farmer. Of course, throughout the centuries, there were always rebels, people who did not accept their fate and would find a way to do what they really wanted (artists, mostly). However, nowadays, with new technology and the Internet, it gets easier to choose what you want to become. This does not mean that it is easy or without difficulties, for sure.