Global Culture

Today, a year ago, I started this blog. One hundred and fifty posts later I’m facing yet another “writer’s block”. As an exercise to get myself to start writing quickly (it is almost midnight), I try to remember the important events of the last year: certainly the highlight would have to be the arrival of my son. I have to admit that I almost dropped this blog a few weeks into it because I figured I wouldn’t have enough time, being a new parent; but felt a weird remorse thinking that I would set a poor example to my kid. It doesn’t matter that he is not among my readers, the fact is I kept going because of him. Before I knew, the research that went into writing this blog started to increase my awareness of the world around me, allowing me to craft new ideas of what the perfect future should look like. Now I realize that I was just trying to be a little bit more responsible for the sake of my family.

This journey feels a little bit like going around the world in 80 days. Connecting with people that I would not have met otherwise, trying to speak in a language that will appeal to a diverse audience, without really knowing too much about them, realizing that no matter how far you go, everyone seems to face the same challenges more often than not and surprisingly very few people are capable of realizing that the answers are already out there. I’ve seen truly courageous people leave everything behind to adopt a new country as theirs hoping their children will have a chance at a better life, but I’ve also seen people standing idle, consumed by the complexity of modern life allowing ruthless corporations take advantage of them in every possible way. It seems, though, that irresponsible behaviour always attracts enough attention to eventually turn things around. In extreme cases it has taken decades for society to reach the collective consensus of what the right thing is, but in the long run it seems we get there. One thing is certain, our obsession for connectivity will continue to accelerate all these processes, eventually allowing society to react quickly to any harm. So I remain an optimist.

I am, however, looking for ways to become more active in this process.