Lab Jornalismo 2050^®

A recent study published in the *Revista Turismo, Visão e Ação* (RTVA) reveals that older managers with longer tenures in restaurants tend to be more risk-averse in their corporate decisions.  The research, conducted by researchers at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), analyzed data from over 2,000 restaurants in Europe between 2014 and 2016.

The study, titled "Influence of Management Team Characteristics on Risk Decision-Making: Evidence from the Restaurant Sector," utilized the Amadeus database and employed the least squares method to analyze the relationship between manager characteristics – age, tenure, gender, and team size – and the companies' level of financial leverage, used as a risk-taking indicator.

The results showed a significant negative correlation between the age and tenure of managers and their propensity for risk. Older managers and those who had held the same position for a longer period demonstrated a preference for more conservative decisions, opting to maintain the status quo rather than adopting innovative or risky strategies.

Contrary to some expectations, the study found no significant relationship between the size of the management team or female participation and risk-taking. Although previous research has suggested a possible influence of these factors, the data analyzed did not confirm this hypothesis in the specific context of the restaurant industry.

The authors suggest that the risk aversion demonstrated by more experienced managers may be related to the prioritization of stability and the reputation built throughout their careers. Familiarity with the sector and a concern to preserve accumulated gains may lead them to avoid decisions that represent potential threats to the business.

Implications for the Sector

The study's findings have significant implications for restaurant management. The research suggests that the composition of the management team can directly influence the strategy and performance of companies. Restaurants with younger managers may be more willing to innovate and take risks, while those led by more experienced managers may prioritize stability and financial security.

Next Steps

The researchers highlight the need for further studies to deepen the understanding of the relationship between manager characteristics and decision-making in restaurants.  Investigating psychological factors, such as individual risk tolerance, and analyzing data from a longer period could enrich the discussion and provide more precise insights for the sector.

A journalistic suite is the continuation of a news story in new articles that update previous ones.  Something like: "Two people were injured in an accident"; then, "Men injured in accident undergo surgery"; further, "Men injured in accident discharged from hospital"; and finally, "Company responsible for accident involving injuries fined." All these sensational headlines relate to the same original event.

Not every type of news warrants a continuation. Some events and accomplishments have the momentum for a single appearance.  However, to appear once or several times in the newspaper, the "thing" must truly be news, which basically means it's not advertising or propaganda – but that's a topic for another time.

In terms of format, a suite is no different from a new news story. After all, a continuation only exists when a new fact is revealed. But it's in style, from what I've observed, that the "marmita das suítes azedou" – meaning why they've lost momentum in recent years.  ("Marmita das suítes azedou" is an idiom meaning roughly that the suites have gone stale or lost their appeal).

Let's take a police investigation as an example.  Journalism of both good and poor quality is interested in criminal stories. However, in both types of quality, a flavor of vice remains, perhaps originating from the pleasure of "scooping" (when a journalist is the first to report something).  It's a haste that hinders more than it helps: not infrequently, versions are presented that collaborate with a story one wants to tell, which may have nothing to do with what actually happened.

Telling the Whole Story

In the case of Armed man threatens Black youth in São Paulo, and police officer refuses to act because she's 'off-duty'; watch video (sense-based translation), for example. This is a story that quickly captured the attention of journalists and the public because a video proves not only the omission of a police officer but also her aggression against a young man. Here, whether the police officer was right or wrong is not under discussion. At the same time, due to the lack of suites, the broader context of the three-minute video was missing.

A story told because of its intriguing nature can yield minutes of viewership and an increase in website visitors. However, without continuity, it's shooting oneself in the foot. In 2023, the Reuters Institute's Digital News Report identified that Brazilians' trust in journalism is 43%, a decrease of 19 percentage points since 2015. Statistically, the downward trend may reach 41% in 2024. In this scenario, all resources of intelligence and integrity are welcome to improve these numbers.

Suites are an opportunity to assure the public that editorial choices represent, even if against the majority view, the vehicle's commitment to a story told from beginning to end, with all its nuances. For this, the editorial line as a whole, and even more so the reporters and editors, must approach investigative activity with the detachment of recounting things as they are, and not as they should be.

The invitation to transformation can stem from countless motivations. In business, for example, it might originate from the founders' or managers' need to increase productivity and, consequently, profits by creating a happiness-conducive environment. In government initiatives, boosting the morale of public servants and partners through a sense of security and recognition is a way to enhance creativity and accelerate project completion. These are legitimate motivations.  However, these plans tend to fail miserably, despite excellent intentions, if the issuer of the invitation doesn't demonstrate that they have undergone the same transformations they propose, and that these transformations have brought them closer to a good life.

The term "good life" can be viewed from numerous perspectives, from the wise to the theoretical. It can be explored through the lenses of philosophy, democracy, and critical theory (Habermas is frequently associated with such research), but we are concerned with its accessible and humane version: a life that has found a sufficiently good path to lessen suffering. A life that suffers less is a good life.

Maturity, which clearly has little to do with age, always demands greater coherence. Coherence saves energy, saves time. The coherent universe uses its power to create lights, small and distant stars.  Nature, coherent in its actions, doesn't think twice before unleashing the sea upon the continent when it must. One doesn't negotiate with a cyclone, with a volcanic eruption. Who has ever been able to schedule a meeting with the earth's depths and cancel an earthquake? The apparent chaos of the environment is, in truth, the coherence of life.

We, a fragile humanity facing the forces of nature and the suffering inflicted by others, learn, then, that coherence is an ally of life. It is coherent for an individual who believes themselves to be inferior to others to emit signals that organize the consummation of their perceptions. It is coherent for someone who believes, erroneously of course, that they are superior or better than others to construct scenarios that prove them right. The moral of the story is: every human life, wise to its very core, organizes the world to continue living. If the only way of life they have learned is one of subjugation, humiliation, and begging for affection, it is coherent to continue in that way, precisely to survive.

Civil defense, however, sends SMS alerts when the risk of severe storms is imminent. Receiving an invitation to transformation is like a civil defense alert. It's a warning that beliefs and behaviors are about to cause further harm. Is it possible to prevent it? Through coherence: most likely not. But it is possible to create contingency plans, future plans. It is possible to vacate dangerous areas of the soul, to move to higher, more sober, and refreshing landscapes.

As for me (in the following paragraphs, I choose not to use the traditional Freudian first-person plural), I no longer dare invite any brother (as I call other humans) to anything that might delay or interrupt their path.

Long before believing in improvements in the quality of analysis, research, or technique, I have a devotion to human freedom. It can go wherever it wants, and it will always have, whenever I am able and it is appropriate, my companionship.

If I possessed a universal truth, I would present it, and without any need for persuasion, it would be widely accepted. This is never the case, because what I understand as truth may make no sense whatsoever to my brother. But I have one truth or another, not universal, that is sometimes kind.

The truth is, I usually confess to my intellectual and political critics that I am in search of a map of coherence. And I can't wait to change my mind on what can be changed! In any case, I have accomplished the feat of being relevant to myself, which is a great deal. This saves me from falling for the rhetoric of imposters.

With this, I hope I have made it clear that I cannot, neither today nor in the future, promise that I have the revelation of a secret, an infallible method, a miracle that can bring laughter and money. I leave those promises to those who have experience with them: those who deceive and those who are deceived (and almost always pay, in money, for it). This does not, however, disqualify me as a salesperson. Under ethical conditions, as a telemarketing representative, I was the best at selling automatic debit payments at Tim Sul S/A, in some month of 2004, a year before starting my professional life in journalism.

When you hire me, you will remunerate me for what I can do for the transformation you seek for yourself and your business. And it will always be far more expensive than those who deceive. If coherence is a life differentiator, what more can be said of the market?

I am a little freer, and a little happier, today than I was yesterday. My realistic observation (although I am a serene pessimist) of life is a disillusioned sigh. When, at 15 years old, I suffered bitterly the end of a relationship that had been the best thing in my entire life, and that would never be repeated, because that was my only opportunity for happiness, and at that moment I only had to live in mourning until my solitary death, a friend who could have been my great-grandfather told me: “Vine, do you know what the advantage of being disillusioned is? It's not being deluded.”

At first, ceasing to believe in promises makes one uncomfortable.  Later, it becomes a lifestyle so sincere, so honest, so coherent. I stopped demanding that others be what I expect them to be. And I don't care when they demand that I be what I am not. It goes in one ear and out the other. I still suffer, but in a good life, one that suffers less. In the end, who would have thought, I am a happy man, to the extent possible.

I was happy every Monday afternoon this semester. In an elective course at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), in a class of very few students, I received from Dr. Emerson Urizzi Cervi the impetus, so dear to me, to discuss journalism. Cervi has a sober journalistic style that reminds me of newsrooms that did not succumb to the allure of the internet.

Sgarbe: Dear Professor Cervi, the readers of this website would be bored if I didn't tell them that I wrote to you when I was still in high school and dreamed of being a journalist. I remember being interested in political communication. Well, as is the nature of self-fulfilling prophecies, here I am about to write my first article for your consideration. Having overcome the main emotional aspect of this conversation, I move on to the next. That is, the cold feeling that watching television journalism causes me. It is not, evidently, a matter of personal taste, but a collegial, collective, and communal dimension of journalism. Despite my conviction that it is not possible to do mass journalism as we conceived it decades ago, it is possible and necessary, it is just and necessary, that television journalism resort to the basic literature of what constitutes news. I refer directly to the "new generation", which has at its disposal reporters of excellent quality, and through whom, via interpersonal relationships, the DNA of journalism can be transferred. I am very seriously suspicious of any journalism that does not clearly address the "commercial-editorial" dilemma. And my first question is: which came first? The chicken or the egg? Is flabby journalism the product of a flabby community?

Cervi: Sgarbe, journalism is a human activity, constrained, limited, and empowered by the social context in which it finds itself. Twenty-first-century journalism will not be the same as twentieth-century journalism, which cannot be compared to nineteenth-century journalism simply because the society of each moment in which journalism is inserted is specific. We need to avoid some exaggerations if we want to understand the role of journalism in twenty-first-century society. The first is technological determinism. It is not technology that shapes journalism, but rather journalism that makes use of available technologies to shape itself. The second is the excessive centrality of journalism in the world.

Journalism is a professional activity and a social institution that integrates the so-called intermediary institutions. Journalism, by nature, mediates the relationship between people and people, people and institutions, people and more abstract social concepts.

So, journalism plays its role well when it manages to mediate social relations in a relevant way, that is, in a consequential way. Historically, mass journalism is an intermediary institution for social stability. It presents the expected rules and behaviors (of course there are cases of journalism used for revolutionary purposes, but this is not the rule). However, and here is an important element, the positive consequence of the intermediary role does not depend only on who mediates, but on the expectations of those who are at the "ends" of the intermediation processes - outside the direct scope of journalism - the sources, on one hand, and the public, on the other. If we want answers about twenty-first-century journalism, we need to ask the sources and the public what they expect from twenty-first-century journalism, not the journalists directly.

Sgarbe: When I read your paragraph, I thought", I have to come back with at least a few interviews in which I ask people what they expect from journalism". Obviously, this is not the case, but I had a reporter's impulse. I understand that to keep journalism alive, as has been done in other eras, we will have to deal with communities absurdly different from those we had ten or twenty years ago. These rapid changes, sometimes justified by technological contributions or even by the severity of a pandemic, have little to do with cell phones and vaccines themselves - items that are much more symptoms than causes. After the fascist uprising and Covid-19, we are in a post-war period. Let's go back a bit. After the First World War, we experienced the avant-garde art movements, among other less singular effects. Psychoanalysis and religious fundamentalism also came out of there. However, in the case of these last two, the results were completely different. For the former, the conclusion is that the end is inevitable and desired, while the latter clings to the harshness of a few phrases that encourage waiting for the return of the Messiah. I understand that, as is expected of history to repeat itself, our present has traces of those patterns. It is utopian, but it would be very good if individuals were able to deal with their internal problems before going on the public stage. Maybe in a thousand years. There are many scenarios and micro-scenarios on the screen, so I am aware that the following excerpt is imprecise. We are polarized more or less like this: on one side, the academy, the cult of scientific investigation (a few hours ago, I said that believing in science without restrictions makes science a religion - it didn't go over well with the group, but I don't care, in this case); on the other, the powerful God who will avenge the wicked and distinguish us from the perverse. I think both are delusional, for this reason here: what good is all this if what is sought is not peace? It will be very difficult to get answers from these people about journalism. Meanwhile, my bet is on precision journalism and a brilliant capacity for dialogue and good humor - with whomever.

Cervi: Well, if I understood you correctly, we have broadened the discussion, moving beyond journalism itself. If so, I agree with your proposal. If we take journalism for what it is: a professional activity with collective impact as its purpose, we will realize that it can only be understood when placed in front of other institutions, groups, and social norms.

The collective purpose of journalism is to meet society's demands for information.

When this purpose is successful, journalistic information serves as a social amalgam, shaping and uniting other social institutions. In other words, the purpose of journalistic information is social cohesion, not distension. The typical phenomenon of the 21st century is that journalism as a purpose faces competition from the dissemination of content and information with the opposite objective of social cohesion. An interesting discussion would be that of freedom as a right. Like any other, there are no absolute rights in any society. Ultimately, even the right to life is not absolute in many societies. What happened in the 20th century is that the struggles for the right to expand and democratize information, which are means, left the ends, which is social cohesion, in the background. It is necessary to bring the discussion about the purposes of freedom of expression back into the public debate. I understand that this was not what you proposed, so I'll stop here. Your proposal was to look at contemporary social conflicts from the micro level, the individual. And, in this case, you point out which institutions have the most impact on social behavior starting from the individual: the church, notably. Religion has the ability to cross from the private to the public sphere without the need for any filter. We will only understand personal conflicts at the beginning of the 21st century when we think about how religions are addressing the differences between spiritual power and material power. When religion focuses on material power, it is because it has already lost its essence, which is spiritual control. From then on, it tends to be increasingly involved in worldly issues and less in spiritual ones. All of society loses, but mainly religion is the biggest loser. Addressing individuals' crises, conflicts, dissensions, the formation of social bubbles from the role of institutions has a greater explanatory capacity than falling into technological determinism, which tends to be a dead end.

The journalist Cândido Machado Neto and I graduated from PUCPR, back when we were discovering politics. In the elections for the Communication Student Center and the Student Union, we encountered corruption. Even ballot box tampering. Cândido, whom my family and close friends call Kiko, is recognized for his conservative views. He has a remarkable reach among young conservatives. We never stopped talking about politics, and we don't understand why people fight over it. In this publication, we are trying out a format inspired by The New York Times opinion columns.

Sgarbe: Kiko, few men in the world are more affectionate with me than you. Maybe Father Paulo. For years, we've discussed politics. I remember us talking about the role of man in the world, whether greater, lesser, or equal to that of a dolphin. Back at the PUCPR Student Union. Do you have any idea how much you change my point of view?

Machado Neto: I can't imagine, my dear friend. I still have issues with dolphins. My point about these pro-democracy texts is that they aren't truly about democracy. I'm going to use a crude phrase, but one that explains well what "democracy" means to so many people". Democracy is like a dick, everyone who has it in their mouth, sooner or later, sticks it up their ass". I am the author of this beautiful reflection that explains it well. The pro-democracy letters are signed by people who not only defend dictatorships but actively participated in financing them. With public money. How can these people talk about democracy? But we don't need to go to extremes, let's talk about our journalist colleagues. They talk about democracy, but they applaud arbitrary arrests, investigations outside any legal framework, persecution, and cancellations. Every day, some Bolsonaro supporter either has their account blocked or gets fined for the simple reason of being a supporter. You met Érica, who was a municipal school teacher and went to protest in Brasília. She ended up imprisoned for five months in Papuda. Meanwhile, in 2014 (you can look it up), the MST tried to invade the Supreme Court during a session, with sickles and machetes, and nothing, nothing, happened to any leader. I can mention the congressman who was arrested despite parliamentary immunity. Something inadmissible in our Constitution. A former president impeached who didn't have her political rights suspended (as the Constitution says) because the president of the Supreme Court at the time didn't want to. Is this democracy? Judges dictating how farmers should plant soybeans. It happened last week. Who the president should or shouldn't appoint to the Federal Police. Judges overturning tax decrees. Interfering in economic matters that are the prerogative of the Legislature. And I won't even mention the pandemic, where people were literally dragged off the streets, stores welded shut with lead to prevent them from opening. Vaccine passports, etc. We no longer live in a democracy. Those who say this, who defend this "democracy", are only defending their own dictatorship. Which one day will bite them too, because the monster of legal authoritarianism is insatiable.

Sgarbe: I understand that you're reacting to Pedro Ribeiro's text on democracy and my question. I'll make it clear, then. You change me. I think it has to do with our level of sincerity. A few months ago, I interviewed a woman who is now a candidate for federal deputy. She has a killer resume. But she told me something like, "we have to study so we can drink half a bottle of wine and question everything we've done". She fits in with us. About Érica. I had the opportunity to talk about her during a class at the university. I told the story in a way that even surprised me. You know I'm on the side of freedom. But back to politics. Is Bolsonaro a kind of Tiririca? Is he computed as a clown? Is it reasonable for someone to see him as "a vote against the system"? It seems coherent to me. But part of the communication is interrupted, thus useless for "everyone", when one argues that he has what it takes to be a president.

Machado Neto: I understand your point. I remember you saying that you talked about Érica at the Federal University. Bolsonaro isn't Tiririca, nor a clown. Bolsonaro is your father, my father, an ordinary person. He is not, and that's why the press loathes him, a social democrat, a socialist. Because the fetish of socialism is the biggest fetish of our press. I'll give you an example. The entire press said that he mocked, made fun of, a person dying from lack of air, from Covid. Even Renata said that. What is the truth? So, we have a media that is fetishistic. That thinks a president is not what he is, but what he appears to be. Unless that president is a simulacrum of a leftist leader like Lula. A press that doesn't give a damn about what the people think. The other day, look at this absurdity. Paulo Martins, Bolsonaro's Senate candidate here in Paraná, went to RPC. So, questions back and forth. A journalist there said that in the 2005 referendum, the people voted against the trade of ammunition and firearms. Paulo said no, that the people voted in favor, and it was a high turnout. She argued and got angry. The next day, she was issuing a correction, saying that the [candidate for] senator was right. Making a mistake isn't the problem here. The problem is the reporter being so detached from reality, so absurdly outside any political discussion. Tucked away in such a huge elitist bubble. That she didn't know that the people voted in favor of guns. You know why she didn't know? Because she can't conceive, in her Novo Batel Shopping Mall mind, of a society that is conservative. That defends families, civilian gun ownership, is against abortion. "It's absurd for it to be this way, they are just extremists". Therefore, the people could only have voted against guns, right? You see? The extent of the divorce our colleagues have from the real population?

Sgarbe: I think Bolsonaro is a parliamentarian. He should have stayed in the Legislature, in my view. It's the right stage for many of his themes. But I consider the Presidency to have a dual function, head of state and the people's "coach" - laughs. I don't want to "fight" for the Brazil of Ciro Nogueira, of Silas Malafaia, I don't even think Brazil is that important anymore, since Bolsonaro is president. A journalist didn't know how to interview Paulo Martins? Doesn't surprise me. Television journalism is a kind of living dead, it doesn't know if it's an Instagram Story, if it's the biggest broadcaster in the country, if it's a life diary that greets the ridiculous "beautiful photo" of a viewer who thought the moon was pretty. Even experienced reporters are losing patience with mediocre "anchors". But it's this journalism that was okay with Lava Jato. Every time Moro farted in his office, it made headlines. 😂

Machado Neto: I don't think Bolsonaro is ideal in anything. He's not a mass leader, nor does he resemble those intellectual mass leaders of the 1930s in either fascism or communism. And that's precisely his advantage. Bolsonaro, if he were a malicious person with the amount of influence he has over a gigantic portion of the population, if he were a bad person as the journalist with the generic foreign last name says, he would have already turned this country into a dictatorship. But those who have been turning this country into a dictatorship are precisely those who claim to want to protect democracy. "We will protect democracy even if we have to implement a dictatorship", they say.

Sgarbe: Pedro, we've been talking for so long, and for so long we've never met in person, that I have the impression we're back in the 90s, with the idea of the web-friend — (laughs). Something that frequently unites us, back to the reality of this opinion piece, is journalism, especially, ironically, opinion pieces. This reminds me of my idol, Gladimir Nascimento. He prevented us, beginners that we were, from airing listeners' opinions without a criteria of respect for the individual expressing the opinion and for the one who would hear it. Something like Noah's sons covering up their old man who had passed out drunk. Having introduced the subject in the worst possible way, I ask if you think the press in 2022 is right or wrong to let so many jackasses pass as columnists, interviewees, etc. Shouldn't we avoid exposing these brethren to ridicule?

Pedro Ribeiro: Dear journalist Vinícius Sgarbe. In speaking with you, this old survivor of letters, or of the pen, as Nilson Monteiro says, feels gratified and certain that I will leave here with learning and knowledge. Having been honored as one of the "Voices of Paraná", in Professor Aroldo Murá's collection of personalities from Paraná, and now speaking with you, I even think I have a little importance or history in our journalism, where I started at Gazeta do Povo 45 years ago. A little. Just. Opinion pieces! You have no idea how many arrive for me per day at Paraná Portal. Each one is hair-raising. Therefore, after a filter, the ones I find interesting, I put a footnote: this article does not necessarily represent the opinion of this newspaper and is the sole responsibility of its author. Today, dear Sgarbe, with social media and so-called citizen journalism, everyone has contributed, in one way or another, with "opinion", to the construction of democracy and in the public sphere. Everyone has their reason. These are articles that, in many cases, spark debates, radical or not, and generate much controversy. Everyone who writes an article has full confidence that their opinion is correct and, sometimes, we have dogmatic examples. We can never confuse opinion pieces with journalistic reports, because, for me, journalism, although a space for counterpoint, its commitment is to the truth, to the reporting of facts, duly investigated. It is neutral. It has its values of freedom, dignity, respect, and openness to opposing viewpoints. Journalism, for me, my dear friend, is the pillar of democracy. Without newspapers, there is no democracy. It's difficult to have to, for example, tell a colleague that his article is nothing more than a press release of personal or corporate interest. He might be offended. I prefer to say that "the editorial board will evaluate it" (laughs).

Sgarbe: Today, I came across one of those podcast clips where a man says "only a fool doesn't change his mind". It even reminds me of the Free cigarette ad. I think that man is right. We can revise an opinion based on new facts. I'm reading a great book by Bion, "Learning from Experience", a psychoanalytic text. I frequently ask myself, daily, what have I learned, after all? One thing is that sarcasm can be very harmful to interpersonal relationships. With these relationships damaged, it becomes more difficult to transfer knowledge. I believe that sarcasm can even be a hindrance for those who are searching for truth. What I argue is that we, journalists, cannot bear the weight of a single point of view, we have to escape the slavery of "lacrolândia" [a pejorative term for excessively politically correct or "woke" culture]. A strong opinion is welcome — very different from the silly comments anchors might make because they have nothing to say. A strong opinion requires a strong individual, a "whole woman", a "whole man". It seems difficult for the 2022 journalist to understand that they don't need to, that they still don't need to, save the media's bacon, that the commercial and editorial roles are very well established. They have to do their job, be loved by their own family, by their friends, but they don't need to beg for success when reporting news.

Pedro Ribeiro: Abandoning a radical, intolerant thought and changing it with conviction is not shameful, on the contrary, it is knowing how to recognize that the earth is round and not flat, that life goes on. It's healthy, it's good for the soul. Reflecting and being self-critical about points of view oxygenates our brain and makes us follow a true path. Our country, one of the largest democracies in the world, demands this. It is a country that experiences and breathes freedom, at least in post-dictatorship journalism. What we see are some specific things like intolerance regarding electronic voting machines, coup attempts, small things that don't even scratch the democratic system. Nothing violent. Having an opinion is a right, but stupidity is unforgivable, because you have time to learn and innovate. As a journalist who writes editorials (opinion pieces of my own and of the newspaper's line of thought), I make mistakes and try to correct my mistakes and, sometimes, by changing my opinion. This is not shameful for me. Many friends ask me: are you going to vote for the thief? I answer with the puffed-up chest of a non-partisan journalist that I vote for whoever is the best and, in our case, today, for whoever is the least bad. The thief may have learned on the "pau de arara" [a torture device], with whips on his back, but the fool, the radical, is worse. This is my "opinion" and I can change it if someone proves to me that we will have, on the other side, an economic and social program for our country that privileges the thin layer of society and not the little more than 500 congressmen and another 55,000 authorities who have privileged jurisdiction. Secret budgets, tons of money from the Electoral Fund. This doesn't fit with my journalistic line of thought. In this case, I'm even radical and sometimes I overplay my hand. But I don't bend my knees. I see many fellow journalists today who have a correct line and pray by the book of good journalism like someone who swears with their hand on the Bible or before the Court, to tell the truth, only the truth. Our country is lacking in leadership. Brazil, today, is the reflection of its own rearview mirror, or mirror. Best regards, Sgarbe.

Sgarbe: Thanks for the lesson, Pedro! Best regards.

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Francisco foi um excelente pai para a Igreja. Chamo-o assim, pelo primeiro e único nome, porque deixou em seu testamento que deveria ser a inscrição em seu túmulo: “Franciscus”.

Escrito na metade de 2022, o texto oferece o “sofrimento que esteve presente na última parte” da vida do Papa ao “Senhor, pela paz no mundo e pela fraternidade entre os povos”. Infere‑se que, desde então, a despedida esteve em suas preocupações.

É coerente sentir estranheza diante de um líder que telefonava para o pároco de Gaza, e que não se esquivou de pedir o desarmamento e o fim da guerra. Naquilo que chamava de “globalização da indiferença”, os homens passaram a consumir os horrores da natureza violenta sem tomar qualquer providência.

Certamente ele foi atingido pelos tsunamis de ódio que cobriram a comunidade humana nos últimos anos. Nesse sentido, nunca vi tanto descompasso entre católicos. Porém, não me surpreende em nada. Afinal, quem não está perdido?

O riso de Francisco vai fazer muita falta. Seu jeito simples de oferecer conselhos, e de ensinar a dar conselhos. Para ele, um sermão não deveria passar de oito minutos. Que respeito aos ouvidos, e ao tempo dos outros! “O senso de humor é um certificado de sanidade”, defendeu.

Pergunta-se, com razoável preocupação, o quanto as lições de caridade ensinadas por ele estão aprendidas, quanto internalizadas. Para que nenhuma geada queime a lavoura de novos cristãos, os cardeais têm agora o trabalho de escolher um Papa que nos ame.

Uns dias antes de morrer, no fim do ano passado, meu avô Jorge ouviu Ravel comigo. Dedico essa memória.

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I repeatedly fail. Even now, I failed in my intention to go to bed at 9:30 pm. For some reason akin to “what the hell! I don't sleep more than four hours anyway,” I surrendered to the drift of darkness. I fear a stern authority will weep to discipline me: “it’s not time to go to the bathroom.” Activities in general. The late-night chats have ended, covered in sand, disintegrated by a shock, incinerated. It’s a little sad. All that chaotic literature that brought me so many friends has gone mad, and speaks to itself in Mark's posts.

The book Maku sent me is well-written, of course, but it's read in super slow motion. The character begins to reveal herself through a desire to die. You don't find such honest people easily. Like toast with cream cheese and red fruit jam. It was the box, the jar. I switched to whipped cream. Whipped cream is foolproof.

This fractal, then: death and life explaining themselves poorly, speaking quickly and loudly, like Brazilian tourists with red lipstick and crossbody bags enchanting the world with smiling rudeness. My analysis, which follows, is sophisticated.

There are life’s discordances that are, it must be repeated, forces of nature. Discordances, in this text, are metaphorically Meryl Streep portraying Florence Foster Jenkins in the cinema, or any instrument that should vibrate a sublime "ooowooowooow," but ends up materializing Grandma Jephinha venturing off-key, without melody.

I like water because it doesn't waste time with stones or walls; it deviates, accepts a good tunnel, but, if necessary, breaks through everything. Water takes for itself lands that didn't even have a vocation for a swimming pool, resting there as a calamitous flood.

The regions of the world that are about to disappear need intellectual support to resolve issues of property, repatriation, and the return of predictable bureaucracies. You cannot erect an island on top of a two-story house; not even Japanese drainage cathedrals make a difference in the ocean. Such dangers equate our intelligence to nothing. Nature is one of the three notable sources of displeasure in Freudian psychoanalysis.

“And from all this out-of-tune instrument I was never an apprentice.” There's this verse in a Gabrielle Seraine lyric. And in her music too, when she sings “[out-of-]tune,” when she sings exactly “deceased,” the harmony shatters for a moment, like a little shit blowing a plastic flute. It's the valley before the peak, the “dark before the dawn.”

Flusser's Spirit

When the out-of-tune individual — the "medium" (of media, not of speaking to the dead) — emits noise, communication becomes clearer. Let's use the word "communication" as a future synonym for "spirit," a beautiful conception of Flusser's.

In the religions that deal with "spirits," note the similarity in the conduct of intentions: doors are opened and closed, people are stimulated to move their psyches, and even banal requests that are nothing more than predictable bureaucracies. One asks, promises, thanks, expels, infuses — all through the conjuring of human and intelligible words.

Accepting Jesus, renouncing Freemasonry, declaring victory, taking possession of the blessing, doing macumba for Dona Ida to die (children are very inventive) — all this requires speaking. From the spell of the Greek Father to the Seven Knocks on the Door of Grace prayer chain from Janine's people. Communication. Speech. Listening.

In some evangelical cults, faced with unsatisfactory communication, someone is likely to take on the role of the demoniac for the benefit of the group. The Catholic mass has so many communication resources that part of the sermon ends up being saved.

"Spirits" are an ancient, primitive subject. It was a way of keeping the dead nearby. Later, these dead became demons. History records in anthropological terms; I have here an original Frazer that I received from Luca. My point is: if spirits "are born" from domestic dead, it is natural that, before committing to events outside the home — speaking of spiritualist meetings, making wind — they are available in the family inventory.

Powerful but Foolish

There is power in psychoanalysis, in Transactional Analysis, in Narcotics Anonymous. But these endeavors require much more time, specialization, and opportunities for mistakes than can be achieved in a family, when a family is available. Family, of course, should be understood broadly.

A family that has understood the permanence of love, that has left the struggles for recognition for community practices, has a better chance of success in invoking powerful spirits.

The powerful spirit of the creator, for those who believe thus, has to make some difference. Is God dead? Don't be fooled. I write about communication. About conjuring, invoking, good communication. In the last line of the noise, "taking possession of the blessing," as well observed by Nina.

In Portuguese, "spirits" have been communication at least since 1976, when Cartola composed: "From each dead person, one will inherit only cynicism." From my tensioning, Flusser offers us a simplification: it's a lot of "spiritual battle" for little "talking like people."

Let's return. The relationship of the out-of-tune, the deceased — properly the word in question, noise, this thing that disturbs sleep — with clarity is not only poetry. The physics and computer engineering that support image generation proceed from the use of two very basic stages that do not harm each other.

To improve someone's skin in a photograph, you first need the caress of blurring, like a hyperope without glasses. Then, you have to add noise, something like an old TV without a signal. And then you can see better.

Thus, my suggestion for the group — laughter — is an appreciation of noise, along with a careful observation of the content of the disturbances. When this battery runs out, with more clarity, let us be arrogant in our pretensions of dignity.

Only I was going to write about something completely different. I'll make another post.

The air of novelty that a New Year brings seems akin to the effect of renewing vows. It is, let's say, an opportunity.  By analogy, a wedding ceremony itself is powerless to effect changes in a couple, in the sense of expanding trust and reciprocity, and the consequent happiness derived from these expansions. A ceremony in itself is nothing, but the couple's focus on achieving a better self-awareness is.  With the new year, it's very similar.

It is entirely understandable to disregard the commercial calendar's timekeeping when one's intention is a free and fruitful life. A personal history should not (but often is) subjected to the mechanics of exhausting work: vacations, recesses, and holidays. Things of this category are very welcome, of course, but almost always correspond to the logic of industry and consumption. Hence the proverb: "The more you have, the less you are."

In these contexts, buying a new outfit for New Year's Eve can be an ambivalent act. On one hand, there's the obligation of purchase, the competition established with other party guests. On the other, there's a legitimate inclination towards self-care, and for the outward appearance to match the novelty of the innermost self.

To change the year within oneself requires a certain degree of the ridiculous. That is, to cross the line of the ridiculous. Instead of a costume, to dress in what truly corresponds to who one is. It's not about *pretending* to be, it's about being in essence.  Something interesting is the fact that what one desires to be in the future can only be true if it is so right now. This is a very basic philosophical idea. It is also true that if something ceased to be, it is because it never truly was.

What I previously called ridiculous could also be called courage. To put on one's own shoes, to open one's chest: to think, speak, act, and celebrate from what one truly is, what always was, and will always be. But courage lies less in the behavioral aspect, which even a ham actor could interpret with utter cowardice, and much more in a permission for the individual spirit to communicate to the world what it came to do.

Why does the "far-right", as much of the media has agreed to label practically any disagreeable position—have so much more success on the internet than the left? To what extent have we, leftists, become the insufferable people we once sought to convert?

The day turned rainy.
The morning, however, was quite blue.
The day turned rainy.
Since morning I've been a little sad.

Anticipation? Sadness? Nothing at all?
I don't know: I was already sad upon waking.
The day turned rainy.

I know well: the penumbra of rain is elegant.
I know well: the sun oppresses, being so ordinary, an elegant person.
I know well: being susceptible to changes in light is not elegant.
But who told the sun or others that I want to be elegant?
Give me the blue sky and the visible sun.
Mist, rain, darkness—I have these within me.

Today I only want peace.
I would even love home, as long as I didn't have it.
I'm so eager for peace that I'm almost sleepy.
Let's not exaggerate!
I am indeed sleepy, without explanation.
The day turned rainy.

Affection? Tenderness? They are memories...
One must be a child to have them...
My lost dawn, my true blue sky!
The day turned rainy.

Pretty mouth of the caretaker's daughter,
Fruit pulp of a heart yet to be consumed...
When was that? I don't know...
In the blue of the morning...

The day turned rainy.

(PESSOA, 2016, p. 269)

You may have heard someone say they wished the day had 48 hours. Those who say this are usually rushing to be late for their next appointment. This person may even live to apologize.

This is because they were the last to enter a meeting, because they couldn't arrive at the beginning of an important class, because they need more time to deliver a project agreed upon many days ago.

Being punctual may seem like a talent given to some, and lacking in others. But punctuality doesn't just depend on talent. On the contrary, what makes punctuality is order given to the things of the day. And it's something that can be learned and taught.

What do you think about arriving at an appointment scheduled for 9 a.m., only to be received an hour later? It will be difficult to find someone who likes to have their time abused by another person. And when we leave someone waiting for us? As much as our guest says "it's okay, no problem. There's no problem at all that you were late, I understand," they must have wondered if our time is really more important than theirs. Disregarding one's own time is already a bad thing.

Let alone the time of others, especially those who help us in our projects.

Having a planner is important for controlling commitments, tasks, and deadlines. A well-written planner helps prioritize activities, avoid forgetfulness, and increase productivity. Furthermore, it helps to organize a daily routine that translates into long-term goals. A planner can also be used to record ideas and jot down important insights during meetings and conversations. In short, having a planner at work is essential for gaining the trust of others.

From paper planners to electronic calendars, or group planners on the internet, planners are increasingly easy to use and integrate with cell phones and services like Amazon's Alexa. Therefore, as reminders are always close by, it becomes difficult, almost impossible, to miss an appointment. A simple planner can rewrite a professional life.

In the next column, we will talk about an elegant and assertive way to interrupt an appointment that has gone past the scheduled time.

This article isn't exactly hopeful at a cursory glance. It tends to make more sense when, through difficult conversation, we achieve some freedom to think and act about wars without the interference of armies. After all, those who promote war can do nothing for peace.

I remember my first lessons on World War II. Well, how could I forget them? At the time, I found it utterly unattractive to learn the years in which it began and ended. I considered the dates meaningless due to my inexperience in relating events. Moreover, my young age didn't differentiate between what fits into one, ten, or a hundred years.

Generally speaking, and for the sake of argument, the Second War followed the First. And it was called "world" because those who named it so considered the entire world to be limited to themselves.  Elementary school knowledge that remains relevant today.

(Parenthesis: Those who lived through the 1990s know that, in terms of forensic pathology – people run over, stabbed, corpses in decomposition – television abundantly supplied us with violent images. In the city where I grew up, a woman drowned her two children in a well and then threw herself in after them. On the lunchtime news program, I watched the small bodies floating. Another case involved a daughter who, with the help of her girlfriend, killed her mother and grandmother. Not to mention the rape, murder, and robbery committed against an elderly woman living alone on Rua XV.)

Ultimately, those who died and those who killed had some kinship with someone close. They were, in any case, considered degenerate, not exactly counted as people. This is without mentioning national cases like the Candelária Massacre, the murder of Daniella Perez, and the murder of Índio Galdino. (End parenthesis)

This is my argument: it's difficult to impress a Brazilian child.

Those common murderers, though extremely dangerous, committed their crimes clandestinely. They were discovered, and then televised, arrested, lynched, or killed by the police. But what they told us about the extermination camps was entirely different, and often more terrifying. There was something wrong about multitudes being murdered in broad daylight.

The way it remains

What we know about the genocide of Jews is etched in black and white in our memories, both through photographs and the brilliant cinematic work *Schindler's List* (1993), directed by Steven Spielberg. Thanks to new technologies, some of these memories can touch us even more profoundly. Using digital resources, I myself colorized a photograph of child survivors of Auschwitz taken by Alexander Vorontsov.

It is difficult to look at them and say: “We despised their families to the utmost, we chose who would be enslaved and who would be killed and incinerated in our four gas chambers with crematoria.” Because that is precisely what we did, in the role of humans.  Shouldering responsibility for that atrocity is a lifelong burden, and I don’t believe there’s any other way to deal with it than to carry it, with shame and remorse, until my last day.  

Confronting this inhumanity, however, is not the same as stagnating in lament. It is precisely the opposite. And, to move forward even minimally, we must shed two convenient illusions. The first is that all responsibility can be attributed to the Führer. Let us, even if this discomfits us to almost unbearable levels, be consistent. No single man could have undertaken the Third Reich without assistance. In 1935, the Nazi Party enacted the racial discrimination laws, and Mr. Hitler was not alone – as official footage attests.

The other classic illusion is that the "world" of the Second World War did not prevent the genocide simply because it knew nothing.  Now then. Upon further reflection, I don't even consider it an illusion anymore – since not every illusion is necessarily a misconception – but rather a blatant lie.  With the illusion, we achieve a certain psychic relief, which frequently converts into proud satisfaction: "I would never have done something like that." With the lie, we maintained the idea that we possess a power that, in truth, we do not.

Lie

Since the Gulf War, another ridiculousity of the nineties, international military conflicts have also become television programs. This is not a figure of speech. Literally, wars are simultaneously television programs.  One needs little intelligence – sometimes not even that – to understand that the images we consume are the creations of a single person. Someone holds the camera, chooses when to press REC, when to stop, from what position what he sees will be viewed, what enters or does not enter the frame. In the case of AI-generated content, someone will have to write the prompt. In this way, the media product of war integrates the general arsenal of war. Those with more or fewer resources to create and propagate stories consequently have more or less war power. It is fair to ask what the destructive reach of a weapon of this kind is.

Since the spontaneous constitution of a public sphere, and its progressive and irreversible decay, public opinion has been used to legitimize or delegitimize the actions of the State. If I convince Brazil that I am "good" and the other is "evil," then Brazilians tend to pressure their government in a specific direction, the product of which varies from support on digital social networks to proposals in the United Nations Security Council.  Telling the best story, however, has nothing to do with telling the most accurate story. This quality criterion is restricted to citizens who are not easily moved by the appeals of the masses – people who, in each social circle, can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

On the path to the finally. So, if the world had known about the annihilation of humans in World War II, it would have acted to protect the Jews. I guarantee that with a clear mind, and three or four videos of the apocalypse in Palestine, one can guarantee with one hundred percent accuracy that it is a lie.

Weakness

Not even the adequate terms to address war crimes in Palestine have been used appropriately in different parliaments around the world.  The Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote that "the closer one looks, the more Netanyahu resembles Trump," in the worst sense. The article states that "about eighty percent of Israelis blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition government for the Hamas catastrophe, according to a poll by the Hebrew newspaper Maariv."

In Brazil, Congresswoman Carla Zambelli – a woman born to be a donkey and who will never become a mare – published an image depicting a US and Israeli eagle attacking a Palestinian rat. I am persuaded, by myself, not to expect this human project to grasp the enormity of its own bestiality.

Faced with nominal lists of thousands of civilians killed by Israel, the response of the “world” is so weak, languid, flaccid. Perhaps this is the moment for this awareness: we are incapable of preventing violence merely by knowing that violence exists. I am warning you now: in the coming hours, Palestinian children will be brutally murdered or maimed, and those who survive will have witnessed their families and friends explode. Knowing this changes absolutely nothing.

A few hours ago, a Palestinian boy went to retrieve a ball when a bombardment occurred directly behind him. His nephew’s back was injured. But the nephew is better off than Saleh al Qaraan, whose head was obliterated in the explosion.

Accustomed to daily encounters with animal posts on Instagram, I saw a tabby cat leap onto the lap of a Palestinian man, where the pale body of a dead child lay. The kitten nestled in, closing its eyes.  This, alongside the mother, who, with the dead baby wrapped in white cloth, refused to cease kissing it. Or the countless videos of children experiencing panic attacks within hospitals.

On an individual level, my work or yours against the war seems insufficient. We cannot count on, at least not now, the prudence of the wise finding a space on the world leaders' agenda. But whether or not we defend Palestinian civilians, now, at every opportunity, speaks volumes about what we have learned about our own wickedness.

Some time ago, I searched for Palestine on Google Maps and found it in the middle of the ocean. At the time, I concluded that the world had ended, at least a certain project of the world, upon finding a people I love so much and who love me, drowned in the hatred in which someone, somewhere, had drowned them.

 Today, after the murder of hundreds (the number is imprecise, but staggering) of Palestinians who were in a hospital, I realized that the world has ended for them, that the apocalypse, the end times, has arrived for those human beings. They witnessed shame, hunger, and then died.

Imagine with me. Suddenly, a foreign authority orders you to leave your home. Fleeing with nothing, your journey is one of thirst and hunger. Then you see rubble, dust, friends, and family sprawled on the ground, some dismembered, others unburied. Then you too die.

If this, which is true, does not also make it true that we have reached the end of the world, then what would constitute the end of the world? Natural disasters, however terrible, are at least honorable. No one can blame the volcano. Genocide with the support of religious groups is the end of the world.

The stance of the international community is insufficient. Humanity is excessively paralyzed in its reaction to wars; the powerful are not truly powerful. They are nothing more than men of the market! And a market of souls, as described in the Book of Revelation.

When I heard, under the administration of the evangelical couple Bolsonaro and Michelle, about a Supreme Court Justice described as "terribly evangelical," I felt shame and fear. The shame pertained to the utilitarian practice of religion, whereby significant theologies, both large and small, are reduced to the opening of yet another unique branch of the latest global church in the neighborhood, or transformed into a political party.

One of the preliminary findings of my latest philosophical research is that Brazilian Pentecostals obtained "authorization" to participate in the public sphere, in their "Bible caucus" form, on the condition that they do not effectively integrate into the political culture except as a voting base.

This finding is based on the fact that, since the Constituent Assembly, speeches and texts funded by Brazilian taxpayers' money have been used to promote agendas of little or no significance, such as the obsession with sexual freedom and the poignant question of the end of the world.

The agreement with the current political power is that anything can be preached from the pulpit, at any cost (whether true or false, objective reality or childish fantasy, it doesn't matter), as long as that preaching favors obtaining votes.

In 2023, very sadly, Pentecostals holding office or employed in cabinets of this kind are not expected to contribute – broadly speaking, in general – to the promotion of public policies and the maintenance of dialogue. Even less are they expected to surprise us with any examination of conscience that would make them reflect on what they do with the cherished role we attribute to them. It is striking that we hold such affection for Pentecostals while they disdain us.

The fear I felt, on the other hand, was that the phrase "terribly evangelical," which expressed an arrogant and provocative stance, would worsen the quality of dialogue among Brazilians, which at that point was at extremely low levels. While the shame had to do with my intellectual and pacifist stance (something more individual), the fear was projected onto what is experienced in terms of the country. As it is expected that the worst fear will overcome us, the communication bridges between those who still believe in community life and the Pentecostals are shattered.

It will be necessary for Pentecostals, marked by their subjection to cultural imprisonment, the enslavement of ignorance, and, for these and other reasons, also subjected to an impressive amount of violence of many kinds, to give a sign that they are willing to collaborate with a balanced future. From our (my) side, patience has run out. Moreover, the patience of evangelicals with their leaders has run out.

Meanwhile, in terms of appointments, it is important to remember the consequences of that "terribly evangelical" comment. Another Supreme Court Justice was appointed by a president "demonized" by fundamentalists. This is Lula's ninth appointment. With the appointments by Dilma and Temer, there are five more. That is, there is a terribly Brazilian collegiate body. Not to mention the Justice yet to arrive.