Reflections from Copacabana

To celebrate our 32nd anniversary we decided to spend a couple of days in Rio de Janeiro / Copacabana beach. Rio is one of the most beautiful places in the world - the contrasts of nature are hard to describe – mountains mixing with tropical-warm-clear-water- sunny beaches make one wonder whether one has reached paradise.

But the contrasts and beauty of nature are challenged by a very different and sad reality: the social inequality visibly displayed on the beach.

Copacabana is the place for the rich and fortunate of Brazil and for the not-necessarily rich and famous from Europe or America. While you will not be able to get a hotel room in the Avenida Atlantica for less than $300 a day, the multitude of vendors selling ice cream, drinks, sun blockers, and bikinis on the beach may not make much more than $10 a day.

I felt a little depressed for a short while, but suddenly recovered from it when I thought that from those sun-burnt men and women there maybe the hope for this beautiful country. While the politics of this great South American nation is infested by corruption these little people were enacting part of the moral law built in our hearts: they were doing a day’s work for (less than) a day’s pay – they were not taking bribes, neither making up facts like many of the countries politicians and administrators. They were even ready to give us the right change for the few items we bought.

I suddenly felt also proud of them - Many of the vendors come from one of the poorest regions of Brazil: the northeast. How do I know that? By their accent, their darker skin, their easy smile, their tendency to too quickly engage the customers in conversations, their politically-incorrect-humorous remarks, and finally by the fact that many of them look just like me – that is the same region where I came from and long to return to with my beautiful blonde Dutch wife, who could have been born there if the Dutch had not left the Northeast of Brazil in 1654.

By the way, we also had the opportunity to share the gospel with someone who
after some conversation revealed a little of the family difficulties he was going through. He was very open to the hope he could find in Jesus. We prayed with him and referred him to a local pastor friend of ours.

Afterwards we thanked the Lord for the blessing of our married life and the opportunity to share it with others.

Thanksgiving and Christmas can be celebrated together.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Paulo and Adriana

Are you tempted by Charientocracy?

Do you suffer from Charientocracy? I do. Let me explain.

Every time I travel and go around different places and give lectures and presentations I approach students, colleagues, and friends with a sense of mission (and concealed superiority). After all I am a university professor with several degrees and an IEEE Fellow - - - and sometimes forget that thinking too highly of oneself is a fatal vice.

This last trip to South America I took a more relaxed approach. I still lectured, but took a different outlook. At the end of my visit I had (I believe) a more profitable and enjoyable time.

On my way back, from 33,000 feet, I kept thinking about a term introduced by a British professor (*): Charientocracy - and from which I borrow much of the following ramblings).

The professor starts by rightly affirming that Theocracy is the worst corrupted form of leadership - then he observes that we are not in any danger of it (unless from the desire of some religious radicals). The real danger, he says, comes from something that would be only a little less intolerable, but intolerable in almost the same way. And that is what he calls Charientocracy: not the rule of the "saints" but the rule of the Cultured, the Educated, the Academic, the Manager - - - -

He goes on to comment that as the old social classes broke down two new ones have developed. On the one hand we have people building themselves into groups within which they can feel superior to the masses; the self-appointed aristocracies. On the other hand we have a new ruling class: the Managerial Class. The combinations of these two groups bring us Charientocracy. And the two groups are already combining, because university education is the main mean of access to the Managerial Class, and rightly so since we do not want our rulers to be stupid people.

With regard to the students the professor mentions that they are now far more defenseless in the hands of the professors as they come from suburban areas in which there are fewer opportunities for spontaneous learning. The educational machine seizes them very early and organizes their life, to the exclusion of all unsuperintended solitude or leisure. In short, the modern student is the ideal patient for those masters who, not content with teaching a subject would create a synthetic character.

The independent minded students will not get good marks unless they produce the kind of responses which commend themselves to their teacher. This means that they are trained in the (not very difficult) art of simulating the orthodox responses. For nearly all students are good mimics. - - -

But the new system wants to control the outcome by presenting every student with an ultimatum: "Read the books and do these simulations, etc, whom we, the educated, approve, and say the sort of things we say about them, or else.” And this shows how Charientocracy can deal with the minority of students who have tastes of their own: They get low marks, are kicked off the educational ladder and disappear into the proletariat.

Having explained why Charientocracy is probable the professor goes on to explain why it is undesirable: culture is a bad qualification for a ruling class because it does not qualify men to rule. The things we really need in our rulers are mercy, financial integrity, practical intelligence, hard work, and these are no more likely to be found in educated persons than in anyone else.

The old professor then affirms that culture is a bad qualification in the same way as sanctity. Both are hard to diagnose and easy to fake. Of course not every charientocrat will be a cultural hypocrite nor every theocrat a person who hypocritically pretends to be deeply pious. But both systems encourage hypocrisy.

But hypocrisy is not the only evil they encourage, he says. In the one we have the docile youth who has neither revolted against nor risen above the routine pietisms and respectabilities of his/her home. Their conformity has won the approval of the parents, the influential neighbors, and their own conscience. They do not know that they have missed anything and are content. In the other, we have the adaptable youth to whom learning has always been something "set" for "evaluation.” Success in this exercises have given them pleasure and let them into the ruling class. They do not know what they have missed and are content.

Both types are much to be pitied - both can sometimes be very nasty. Both may exhibit spiritual pride, but each in its proper form, since the one has succeeded by acquiescence and repression, but the other by repeated victory in competitive performances. One tends to be raw, truculent, eager to give pain, insatiable in its demands for submission, resentful and suspicious of disagreement. Where the soft slinks and sidles and sometimes scratches like a cat, the cultured gobbles like an enraged turkey. And perhaps both types are less curable than the hypocrite proper. A hypocrite might repent and mend and rendered innocuous. But who could bring to repentance those who were attempting no deception?

Finally, the prof points to the fact the why Theocracy and Charientocracy are almost identical. The higher the pretensions of our rulers, administrators and academicians are, the more interfering and impertinent their rule is likely to be and the more the thing in whose name they rule will be defiled. The highest things have the most precarious foothold in our nature.

Reflecting on this writings helped me to tune up again for the semester – in which I hope to fight the temptations of Charientocracy; to foster independence, creativity and even rebellion. I will do my best to not require students to regurgitate what the textbook authors say, much less my rendering of their content. I hope to excite their natural modes of resonance, to encourage spontaneous learning and creative-imaginative responses; to map out boundaries for analysis and development, all constrained by ethical principles.

I then remembered that I learned a great deal from a blind uneducated fisherman (in the northeast coast of Brazil) - - - and who contributed to my college education more than some of my own engineering professors.

Thus, perhaps the lesson for all of us: be appreciative of the good education received (even from unconventional sources) and never to boast in it.

I feel a little lighter now - - - as the plane prepares for landing.

Cheers

Paulo

(*) CS Lewis

Developing a Christian Mind (Intellect, Feelings, Will and Heart) CS Lewis: Integrating Reason, Imagination and Faith

Dinner at the Ribeiros with our DCM Lewis Class

Check the Blog List

http://www.calvin.edu/~pribeiro/Calvin%20College%20-%20DCM%20Blogs%20-%202010a.html


Paulo and Adriana

Challenges and Creativity - Public Health Among the Poor in Brazil

 Medical and Social Assistance to a Poor Community

Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil

May 2009

Done in connection with  a local Baptist Church

Dr. Adriana Schalkwijk Ribeiro is a Medical Doctor (MD) registered in the states of 

Pernambuco e Minas Gerais, Brazil

CREMEPE 8221, 1981

CRMMG 49248, 2009

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New Mexico Sun Set

Friends from Las Cruces, NM - July 2008

We are about to wrap up our wonderful time in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The work at the University was great with possibilities for continued cooperation. Adriana and I felt very much at home with the desert climate and New Mexico has become our newest home state. The land is beautiful and enchanted - just like Narnia. And above all we made new friends - who make life so much more exciting and worth living.
Thanks to you all.
Paulo and Adriana




"Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each other the beauties of all others." CS Lewis