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We are living in the best of times.

Thank you The Economist for putting it on paper. I have been saying it for years and using the exact same simple arguments as are on here. I’m happy they printed it and spread it around the world:

“It may not feel like it in the West, but this is, in many ways, the best of times. Hundreds of millions are climbing out of poverty. The internet gives ordinary people access to information that even the most privileged scholar could not have dreamed of a few years ago. Medical advances are conquering diseases and extending lifespans. For most of human history, only a privileged few have reasonably been able to hope that the future would be better than the present. Today the masses everywhere can. That is surely reason to be optimistic.”

- The Economist, December 18th 2010

Door out in Relationships

I decided to publish this simple thought and analogy after having shared it for the second time in under a week. In both cases it was met with smile-felt “ahhhh”s and seemed to have solved some mind-troubling for both friends. It is a thought that developed after thinking about my own love relationships and those of family and friends:

Many people tend to believe that the trick towards building a long-lasting and love-plenty relationship is to close off the exits from the relationship. In more technical terms, it means building disincentives towards the break. Examples from these vary from simple disincentives like having many friends in common; to more intricate ones like moving in together, marriage and raising the stakes of a break-up.

While disincentives work in almost every situation where we are supposed to make rational decisions, love would not receive the name it does if it was supposed to be rational. Which means that disincentives can be completely counter-productive.

The point cannot be better expressed than through this simple analogy:

Imagine your best friend invites you over to his/her house. This is someone you trust, quite possibly the person you most trust in the world. You have been to this person’s home many times before and you feel very comfortable there. If you walk in and sit down, have some coffee, switch on the TV… you are most probably going to enjoy yourself and the thought of leaving would not even cross your mind.

However, what if things played out a little differently (remember this is someone you fully trust and enjoy the company of). What if this time as soon as you stepped inside their home, they locked the door and threw the key out the window. What would be the first thing you would try to do?? Would you sit comfortably on the couch, or would you immediately try to find a way to get the hell out of there?? …. It’s crazy how single actions can completely change a dynamic that was so comfortable before.

Does this translate to romantic relationships? I truly believe so. If you have the door out, being inside is always a choice. Of course one could leave, but the act of staying continuously strengthens you relationship and what you are both building together. Having a door out does not mean you have to take it, but not having will many times make you spend your time and emotions searching for it rather than enjoying your time inside.

Does this mean you should not move in together, marry or increase the connections of both your lives?! Not at all. Of course you should intertwine your lives, just make sure it is always a choice from both of you. If it is, you will both be able to fully enjoy it and live it for what it is, without having to spend your energy trying to figure out how to leave.

Dear Editor at the Economist

I wrote this letter in response to an article published on June 12, 2010

Dear Sir,

In your article about “A magic moment at the city of God” you state that the “gangsters (…) could impose their reign of terror thanks to the brutal incompetence of the police and the venal indifference of the authorities.” I find this statement to be as useful as blaming train tracks for a train’s motion and forgetting the most important piece: the engine. The violence seen in the Brazilian favelas is fueled by a powerful engine of drug trafficking. Bringing strong law enforcement to one area does not solve the problem. It simply causes the symptoms to migrate elsewhere, to a place where law enforcement is not as rigorous. A solution can only be claimed when a plan is formed to disincentivize and greatly reduce the drug trafficking industry as a whole. Until then, the train is still moving, only on different tracks.

Thank you,

Sidney Efromovich
São Paulo, Brazil

Book: The Intelligence Code (O Código da Inteligência) by Augusto Cury

It took me a while to finish reading this book. It describes a series of eight “Intelligence Codes” that Cury recommends us all to decode. 

They are:

1. The Code of the Management of Intellect

2. The Code of Self-Criticism

3. The Code of Resilience/ or of Psychoadaptation 

4. The Code of Altruism

5. The Code of Debating Ideas

6. The Code of Charisma

7. The Code of Creative Intuition

8. The Code of the Management of Emotions

My freeze came as I found myself having a hard time decoding number three: the Code of Psychoadaptation, while living here in Germany. I finally did about a month ago and finished the book after finishing the others I had started in the meanwhile.