Sueño Inmortal

Ese día soñé que todo era perfecto. No había enfermedad, miedo, muerte o vejez. No había un sólo motivo en el mundo para estar triste. La sabiduría absoluta, al fin, era una realidad y Dios, lo mismo que un cuento de hadas. El ser humano había alcanzado todo lo que alguna vez quiso: no ser humano.

Todo el mundo estaba viviendo en un tiempo estático sin que sus cuerpos envejecieran. Nadie era capaz de morir, por lo que no era necesario reproducirse. La genética estaba tan controlada que nadie podía desarrollar enfermedad en algún momento de su vida, las heridas sanaban solas y los miembros se regeneraban por sí mismos.

Todo era tan diferente y maravilloso. Los avances tecnológicos eran tales, que en tiempos pasados parecería que se trataran de magia, pero no era más que la vida real. El hecho de vivir en las nubes o más allá de ellas, ¿quién lo diría? El desarrollo de un poder mental capaz de conocer el pasado, presente y futuro al mismo tiempo.

Gracias a la selección genética, la apariencia de los humanos era como de ángeles bajados del mismo cielo; todos igual de hermosos, perfectos e inmortales. La fealdad y deformidad dejaron de existir, dando paso a una belleza perpetua en cada ser vivo sobre la tierra.

La inmortalidad no sólo había suprimido la necesidad de reproducción entre la raza humana, sino que también, ambos sexos desaparecieron, para haber solamente uno que no era ni hombre ni mujer, sino que existía para vivir sin el miedo de no encontrar a la persona ideal con la cual pasar el resto de sus días hasta dejar de vivir.

Los nuevos post-humanos habían perdido todo lo que los había hecho humanos alguna vez. Cambiaron su forma de vivir y pensar, y atrapados en una interminable felicidad falsa, alteraron el curso de su evolución para sellar su destino como la raza del egoísmo por excelencia, sin poder volver a experimentar sentimientos como el amor, enojo, tristeza, alegría o satisfacción por el resto de la eternidad.

Al final fue todo muy confuso. La naturaleza siempre toma decisiones que van más allá de lo que tienes planeado. Hay cosas que han existido antes y existirán después de uno mismo. Cuando tu mundo se acaba ¿qué más te queda por hacer? Vagar. Flotar en el espacio como un ente sin propósito que se regenera interminablemente y que existe pero no puede vivir, solo sufrir. ¿Toda una pesadilla, no? Ojalá pudiera despertar de ella…

The Moral Aspect of Cannibalism

Nowadays, in Occident, cannibalism is considered as a barbaric thing that sickens any sensibility and does not belong but from savage people or a psychokiller. But in reality, little is known about this interesting practice. First of all, we can define cannibalism as the practice or action of eating the flesh of one’s species; this concept could be applied for any kind of species all around the world. On the other hand, anthropophagy means eating human flesh specifically, and this concept could be applied for animals when eating human flesh. Now, to follow with the topic, we can find several types of cannibalism according to its purpose and cause.

According to its cause, we can mention the “survival cannibalism”. This type of cannibalism is permitted in Occident when it is your last resort in an extreme situation where your life is in danger. You have to eat the another`s flesh to survive, otherwise you die. One phrase that explains this is “when the stomach speaks, the moral hush.”

Also in line with its cause, we have the “pathological cannibalism”. This type is practiced by the worst kind of cannibals. Persons, if we really can call them like that, that have normal lives, have family, friends and normal jobs but actually have no empathy for others and live among us. They do not know the moral meaning of good and bad. The good is their own and the bad, the incapacity of getting what they want. They kill for pure pleasure and feel as though they were a superior species and consider their congeners as prey. They kill and eat human flesh because of their own feeling of superiority, and egocentricity. Its cause is supposed to be several things such as traumatic events in their past, sexual abuse in childhood, brain injury, and sociocultural factors but all of those are conjectures.

In agreement with its purpose we can find “ritual cannibalism”, same that is practiced in indigenous communities and, at once, can be split into “exocannibalism” which means to devour the flesh of the enemy or a person that does not belong to the same tribe. This kind of cannibalism is motivated, in many cases, for evenge against the enemy.  On the other hand, “endocanibalism,” which is to devour the flesh of a member of the same tribe or community, represents an act of love before the relatives are already dead. Also ritual cannibalism has the purpose to obtain vital properties from the person that is supposed to be eaten or to get supernatural skills from it.

The Forensic Psychiatrist José Cabrera Forneiro has established for Excelsior newspaper: “Cannibalism is not a decease but a compulsive behavior that sinks its roots in the beginning of time and now it is still appearing beyond the normal psyche.”

Personally, I find this topic quite interesting because of the peculiar connotations this practice can be attributed to in many cultures, also its different causes and motivations. From the first to the last type of cannibalism, we can get contrasting meanings. How it can be defined evenly as love, revenge, punishment, or survival.

I think it is more horrifying that humans are the enemies of the own human being. There is no bigger living thing that can stop us from doing the worst things in the world. Only humans can be destroyed by their own similar ones. For me, that is the most loyal meaning of cannibalism: the decay of humans by the same humans.

I am not sure what posture I would take before this theme. I just get startled by the great significance it has in our cultures around the world, and how it has presence subliminally in our lives when we pronounce phrases such as “you are so sweet that I would devour you with kisses” or when at mass the priest claims the Jesus Crist’s words “eat from my body and drink from my blood,” that is the most cannibal thing I have ever heard.

To conclude, although we want to hide this cannibal instinct which is beating inside our cells, we always are going to supreme that and turn it into another taboo. We are not concerned of how much we are able to, how bad we can be, or how starved to think in eating another person’s body. Anyway, we will always be the worst thing we can: humans.


References

http://www.excelsior.com.mx/global/2015/02/01/1005869
Historia Natural del Canibalismo por Manuel Moros Peña

Types of Medicine

There are two principal types of medicine: the conventional and alternative medicine. These both are called in other several ways; nonetheless, for terms of this essay we are going to call them like that respectively. To start with the theme, we will describe the meaning, characteristics, and differences between them and also the importance and impact they have in our lives.

Medicine has much to do with our own culture. In different countries we can find many kinds of curative methods. Some of them keep a narrow relation to certain ideas depending on the culture the medicine is from. For example in the East, oriental people in China have acupuncture and herbalist that goes along with specific beliefs they have like chacras, ying and yang etc. You cannot practice that kind of medicine if you don’t have enough knowledge about those beliefs, and the methods they apply follow those ideas and have a logical reason according to that.

In Occident we have conventional medicine which consists in chemical medication, drugs, academic doctors, hospitals and an entire medical business system. This type of medicine does not have a connection to any kind of faith. It is only based on scientific researches and investigations about the human body and how it reacts when exposed to some chemical substances. Both, conventional and alternative have advantages and drawbacks, nevertheless, each one have their own attributes and can be applied at once to complement one another. Now we are going to discover the differences between them.

Conventional medicine attacks the symptoms but not the real cause of the disease. The problem with this is that if you do not know the cause, you most likely will fall into that condition again because you are just healing the effects not the origin of the problem. Other characteristic of this medicine is that, compared with the human existence on the earth, is quite new and is still having  new discoveries, new techniques, curative methods and having breakthroughs. It is considered as a science and its diagnosis is performed through machines to discover the disease, and the methods are basically treatments of drugs, medicines and surgeries.

On the other hand, we have alternative medicine which is not considered as a science because some of alternative methods are connected to religious concepts or based on mystical beliefs. The principal objective of this medicine is to cure the cause of the disease. The methods are natural resources like plants, music, magnetism, scents, meditation, and other elements that do not come from industries. The ones who practice these types of medicines almost do not use any kind of machines but instruments and tools to perform the treatment. Unlike the conventional medicine, the alternative has been practiced since the beginning of the human existence. It was the first medicine because in the past there were not chemical drugs to cure and the human health was not a business like nowadays.

In addition to this topic I am going to add the homeopathic medicine which establishes that what causes disease in a healthy person, can cure him/her in little doses consumed. This is a direct opposite idea compared to allopathic or conventional medicine because it consists in to consume something different to de agent is getting you sick. Either way homeopathic is not considered as a real medicine but a placebo.

In my opinion, we can combine both of them, conventional and alternative so that we can have a complete successful treatment. Human body is not only chemistry and physics; we are much more, we have emotions and feelings which can lead us into sickness. The problem begins since conventional medicine is not affordable for everyone. It is so sad that “universal medicine service” is just a goal, not a reality.

The health professionals should be more humanized and think about how to help people truly instead of turning health into a business. Everyone that needs medical attention should be able to afford it without discrimination. The insurance people think that sick people is costing lots of money but if they helped them to prevent, they would not be in that situation and the money spent could be less. Finally in Mexico we have more options to choose if you get into sickness, you can go to conventional or alternative. If you choose conventional, you have private or public options. It is a relief that we can have it here.

References

http://comocosas.com/diferencias-entre-medicina-convencional-y-medicina-alternativa/

Employment Discrimination

Discrimination is a different treatment to people that, allegedly, cannot fit in certain groups, in this case, getting hired. This is a problem to our society since different kinds of people can provide better things to companies and, at once, these last can contribute to those persons to get a better opportunity of development in life. There are different types of discrimination, but the one that this essay is going to talk about is employment discrimination. This type of discrimination refers to a different treatment from an employer to their employees or the candidates for a vacant post just because of their identity traits like nationality, ethnic origins and religion, or human aspects such as age, sex, pregnancy and disability. All these things are discrimination causes. Female population and needy people are the most discriminated when looking for a job, but with the different types of employment discrimination, anyone could be an easy target of it. This idea goes accompanied by stereotypes that categorize people with misconceptions about how they are or how they are going to behave.

When we mention “Identity traits” we can talk about the things that characterize you as a person; those things that define you for the rest of your life and you cannot change. Ethnic origins are another subject to discrimination because ethnic groups have another customs, beliefs, habits, symbols, languages etc. that may not be liked for the employers in a company. If you are an indigenous person, they may think that you are probably poor, illiterate, not well educated or not enough prepared for the job. The same thing happens when you are a foreign person because they do not know you and just try to categorize you according to the things they know about people from a specific country, but in this case it depends on the job. In other jobs it could be a great plus that you are a foreign person because of the contributions you can do for the company. Nonetheless, here in México, we discriminate not only foreigners, but our own people.

If you belong to a not very common religion, you may be subject to discrimination too, because of the different rules and regulations you have when you are not from a majoritarian religion like Catholicism. It is a reality that Catholicism is the most professed faith in México, and the others are minority religions. That is why the employers hire people that profess the same faith of them, because it is something that they know and the way they direct their own lives, although it is just in words and not actions.

Human aspects are other causes of discrimination and are also things that you cannot change. Sex, for example, is one of the greatest causes, most of all if you are woman due to being able to get pregnant. This is a really difficult one because you may think that the companies have plenty of reasons to not hire a pregnant woman or within a reproductive age, but the reality is that pregnancy is a human aspect which belongs just to women and cannot be changed or averted. No one can judge you for an aspect you inherited by nature and that is a part of your biology. Not even for the decisions you want to face in life like becoming a mother in the future.

Things are not different if they have offspring. If a woman have children to support and the employer knows it, that could mean bad news for her, since they think that she is going to miss work every single time her children get sick or any kind of affairs related to them. The contrasting part is that it may be true because children need much more attention than older ones, but it is also true that she is going to be constant in work because of the same reason she might miss work. In fewer words, she really needs the job. She is going to miss work sometimes, but she is going to last because of her little ones.

If you are a beautiful woman, you can get more things than not pretty ones because of their bodies or beautiful faces. I know that sounds stupid and makes no sense. When you, as a woman, feel confident of your abilities, it should not matter if you are pretty or not, because of your educational preparation, skills and values that can be contributed to a job; regrettably, sex is what sells and they know it, they prefer to see a beautiful girl nearby, instead of a well prepared person.

In this point we can talk about physical appearance. People that are too fat, elderly or have lots of visible tattoos to be hired. Unfortunately physical appearance does matter and quite much. Although the discrimination increases depending on the type of job you are looking for. If you are looking for a job in which you have to deal with people like in customer service, or in sales, your appearance does have a great importance. And it is more probable that they got convinced if you are good or not for the job just by staring at you from head to toe. Old people have the same problem because they have many diseases due to their age. Their health is not steady and that could mean a weak point for an applicant when looking for a job. The employers do not want someone that gets sick frequently, that represents waste of time for them, and at the same time elderly people is still in need. Sometimes they live all alone, without their families, and they are forced to go out and get some money to live in spite of their age.

When one person suffers a chronic disease, it could represent impairment for the employers to hire him or her. As we discussed before, they are not searching for people that has a lot of health problems because those persons spend huge amounts of money for their own well-being. And with the passing of time, their conditions can be worsened. You may think that companies are intelligent for not hiring sick people, but they can be seen as greater companies by giving opportunities without judging and discriminating.

Something similar occurs when we talk about sexual preference and the sexual identity.. The sexual preference refers to the sex you are attracted to and the sexual identity refers to the sex you are identified with. Your sexual preference could be women or men, and you, at once, can identify yourself with one of them that may not agree with your anatomy. For example, you may be a man that likes women but identifies himself with women, in other words you may be a transgender person and that is another subject to discrimination when getting a job. The employers may think you likely have any sexual transmitted disease just because of your sexual preferences or the life they imagine you follow based on your sexual identity.

On the other hand, disable people face a great difficulty when looking for a job, and comes from the fact that they do need special attachments and spaces in the case of physical disability that may not fit in the space of the company. When we talk about mental disability it is a little different because mental disorders can be controlled by medication, but if one person decides not to take his/her medication, things can turn violent and unpredictable. Nevertheless, jobs with disable persons hired exist, although those are not many.

In other cases experience could be an obstacle in the quest if you do not have very much. Obviously they are searching for people that are young but quite well experienced –another thing that has any sense- it is illogical thinking that a young person could reach the experience that you are demanding in that short time. They say that it means less waste of time to hire an expert staff than a young one not well experienced because it is supposed that the expert ones know how to do the work in less time and do not need very much training. And here comes the irony: how can I become an expert if you do not give me the opportunity to learn.

Finally, to conclude with this essay, we can say that discriminative companies are not doing well treating people in different ways, since variety of people can provide more rewarding things to them. Discrimination just segment and split people instead of taking advantage of the abilities that you did not imagine someone could have.

References

http://expansion.mx/opinion/2013/07/24/la-discriminacion-laboral-en-mexico

http://www.conapred.org.mx/index.php?contenido=noticias&id=3685&id_opcion=316&op=448

http://www.lclaa.org/discriminacion-laboral

http://alertacontraelracismo.pe/que-es-la-discriminacion-etnico-racial