Scatterbrainy

By the hatred, the rising suspicion, the economic arguments and most of all by the sense of resignation.

We think everything is getting worse, and admittedly, it is an easy mistake to make.

Easy access information makes every crime known and magnified,

leading us to think criminality is booming.

The financial crisis is unintelligible to most people and so we blame the European Union,

because none of this happened before, right?
The international (but prominently American) war on drugs is causing more harm than good,

and we think there is nothing we can do, because fighting leads us nowhere.

Even on a more personal note, it is easy to get swept away by this current tsunami of pessimism,

so detrimental and so fundamentally counter-productive.

The truth is we live in a time considerably more characterized by peace and tolerance than any other.

Steven Pinker's research shows that, despite our perception, violence has declined.

He shows how reason trumps violence, just as Voltaire said that 'stupidity generates cruelty'.

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In Europe, we seem to have forgotten the idea of the European unity. A collective mind.

When economy fails us, we do not blame the financial system, but the very idea of Europe.

Seventy years of peace cannot convince us, because we no longer remember what came before.

Centuries of wars, rewriting the European map before the ink had the time to dry.

Xenophobia and bancruptcy are serious problems,

but we must not let them take away our belief in a bigger context.

Our belief in Europe.

Today, in Colombia, Barack Obama claimed to be 'open to debating the US drug policy behind the Drug War.

And all over the world, leaders and experts are discussing drug policy from a new perspecting,

where the consequences are debated, rather than morality and good intentions.

People are aware.

We are better off, economically and health-wise, than ever before. 
Dictators are overthrown, opposition rises for the first time in decolonized countries,
youth activist believe in their own power to change and they use it.
How can we see all these things and not be optimistic?

I do not pretend that the world is simple. I don't want it to be.

But neither am I ready to give up on the world.

We are not there yet, but we are travelling.

The destination might be less important.