Communication today

Never in human history have we had better means of communication, yet never in human history have we been worse at communicating. 

We can talk across oceans and continents at the tap of a button. We can send a photo, a thought, a silly message, and have it reach thousands, even millions, instantly. The distance problem is gone. The time barrier is gone. 

But what we gained in speed and reach, we have lost in depth. 

Messages fly faster than ever, but meaning slips through the cracks. We mistake signals for connection. A like, a thumbs-up, a little heart—nice, but shallow. It’s not listening. It’s not dialogue. And dialogue is what we’ve forgotten. Because dialogue takes patience. It takes empathy, reflection, maybe even the courage to be vulnerable... 

The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan (1991-1980) stated before the internet era that “...the medium is the message.” 

Indeed, the tools we use shape the way we think, the way we speak, the way we relate. A letter slows us down. A phone call pulls us into presence. A text pushes us to rush. 

The real challenge today isn’t inventing new tools. The challenge is to use them differently. To pause. To listen. To put more weight on connection than on reaction. 

Because in the end, communication was never about the medium. It was always about us. And communication isn’t about the number of people we can reach; it is about reaching people deeply.

May 4th 1945

On the evening of May 4th 1945, 80 years ago, the Danish journalist Johannes G. Sørensen was making his daily report on the BBC for Nazi-occupied Denmark. At 20.35 he made a sudden pause while announcing the news, and then gave the happy message: “I dette øjeblik meddeles det, at Montgomery har oplyst, at de tyske tropper i Holland, Nordvesttyskland og i Danmark har overgivet sig”. 

People all over the occupied countries went out to celebrate the liberation after five years of war. It was not all peaceful for the next weeks and months as troops had to be disarmed and many people sought revenge on Germans and collaborators. 

That said, the announcement was a special moment, and many years ago I asked my now-deceased Grandmother how they had experienced it. 

She said they had heard it on the radio and they all went out on the street in the small village of Paarup to celebrate. But her most touching story happened the next day when she went along with the local milkman to a nearby German base situated on the hills of Funder. As they arrived to the base they were stopped by two German guards on duty. “What are you doing here? Don’t you know the war has ended?” 

The Germans threw away their weapons and their uniforms in celebration and hugged one another. 

Germany had lost the war, but as everyone they were men who wanted the nightmare of the war to end and return to their families in Germany. 

The following weeks thousands and thousands of German soldiers marched south on their way home down Hovedvej 13, past the Dairy where my Grandfather worked. Defeated but happy to have survived and go home to a Germany that was completely destroyed, but hoping to see their families alive. 

 80 years later it remains important to keep remembering the message of liberation,because today new threats against our freedom and peace are arising.

Siete años

Aqui sentado con mi cuarta cerveza Regia.
Escuchando canciones que me dan nostalgia.
Nostalgia del capítulo que termina.
En El Salvador.
Mi casa de casi siete años, vacía excepto por una cama y una maletas por llenar.
Y mis dos gatos, los muy mugres, uno de los tesoros que me llevo de El Salvador.

Tesoros: las memorias lindas de un pais que he llegado a querer. 
Tesoros: los amigos y amigas que logre tener, que a pesar de que son pocos, son estrellas que siempre brillarán con tanta fuerza que puramente pensar en ellos me iluminará.
Tesoros tambien lo que aprendi: que hay gente que puro habla pero al momento de apoyarte, no están ni estarán. 

Tristemente, aprendí a desconfiar, de otros y de mi mismo.
Pero la lección ya me ha hecho más fuerte.
Aprendí que a veces el esfuerzo no es suficiente, ni en el trabajo o la amistad; que a veces hay que aceptar y dejar ir.
Después de mucha lucha conmigo mismo, aprendí que no soy mis errores; no soy perfecto, pero tampoco soy malo, a pesar de lo que piensen y hablen de mi.
Me afecta, siempre me afectará, porque no hay nada que yo quiera más que la gente a mi alrededor esté bien, y si no lo están, que les pueda dar un granito de luz a sus vidas.
Porque toda persona merece felicidad; toda persona merece una sonrisa.
Pero no lo logré, y lo acepto.

Aqui solo en mi casa, como pasé días y semanas y meses durante la pandemia. Una noche más, pensando (principalmente...) en lo bueno que pasó, en todo lo bueno que viene, los desafios, agradecido a Dios por los siete años y por lo que vendrá.

Y ya decidido a que tomaré esa quinta cerveza Regia, otro tesoro que me llevo de El Salvador.

Paul Ehrenfest

I have just started reading the book “The Maniac”, by Benjamin Labatut. The first chapter, referring to the theoretical physicist Paul Ehrenfest made a deep impression. 

Ehrenfest was an Austrian theoretical physicist working in the early 20th century, the golden era of theoretical physics. A Jew born in Vienna in 1880, he had experienced discrimination although he was a declared Atheist, while never denying his Jewish heritage. In fact, as he was completing his studies his declared Atehism prevented him from positions at the university in St. Petersburg in 1907. 

Ehrenfest had initially started studying chemistry, but had become fascinated by theoretical physics from his mentor at University of Vienna, Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906), who sadly killed himself by hanging in 1906. By this point, Ehrenfest was already advancing in the field; he had been at the University of Gottingen, one of the main universities in Germany, and had there married a Russian mathematician, Tatiana Afansyeva (1876-1964), with whom he had four children; his youngest son Wassik, born in 1918, suffered from Downs Syndrome, but was loved by his parents. 

In every respect Ehrenfest was a leader in his field. In 1912 he secured lecturer at University of Leiden in the Netherlands, where he became one of the most respected professors, teaching later giants such as Jan Tinbergen (1903-1994), Hendrik Casimir (1909-2000), Gerard Kuipier (1905-1973), as well as working closely with Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), Igor Tamm (1895-1971), Robert Oppenheimer ((1904-1967), Ralph Kronig (1904-1995), Werner Heissenberg (1901-1976) and Paul Dirac (1902-1984). His wide circle also included a close friendship with Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Niels Bohr (1888-1667). Einstein used to stay at his house in Leiden, even in 1923 when he was fleeing death threats in Berlin. He often tried to mediate between Einstein and Bohr in their ongoing discussion about Quantum physics, and in the 1928 Solvay Conference, when the greatest Physicians met to discuss exactly the issue of Quantum physics, Ehrenfest was chosen as the main mediator because he was admired widely “...not only his critical and intellectual capacities but something rather different, a virtue that is usually lacking among giants: ethics, character, as a well as a deep, some would say overwhelming, desire to understand, to grasp the core of things” (Labatut, p. 6). 

All his colleagues admired his for his great teaching skills and way of facilitating the difficult questions of physics being debated at the time. In fact, Einstein said: “He was not merely the best teacher in our profession whom I have ever known; he was also passionately preoccupied with the development and destiny of men, especially his students. To understand others, to gain their friendship and trust, to aid anyone embroiled in outer or inner struggles, to encourage youthful talent - all this was his real element, almost more than his emersion in scientific problems.” (Cited in ut of my later years, p. 236, on https://web.archive.org/web/20140312224422/http://www.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/history/Einstein_archive/Rowdy_Boeyink_website/). 

In every respect Ehrenfest seemed like a success. Respected by geniuses in the time of so many geniuses. A great lecturer, and a wife who loved him and four beautiful children. 

But behind the charm, the intelligence and incredible energy, Ehrenfest suffered from deep depression, and it all ended in tragedy. 

Einstein had already written to University of Leiden in 1932 out of concern for Ehrenfest for them to lighten his workload. But to no avail, as Ehrefest refused to lighten his work, and continued being the excellent lecturer he had become. 

Already a deeply emotional man, Ehrenfest was deeply affected by things happening around him: he was, as Einstein, deeply troubled by the apparent irrationality of Quantum theory, especially troubled by Heisenberg’s uncertainty. It was not that he rejected the theory per se, in fact at Solvay he had appeared to accept Bohr’s arguments, but rather he was troubled by the philosophical implications that appeared to advocate that everything was irrational, disorganized and not able to be ordered in a logical and rational sense. This appeared to deeply trouble him as his personal life was also falling apart, and he saw himself in need to seek a divorce from Tatiana despite her expressing his love and even accepting that he was having an affair. 

She was seeing his slide towards the bottom, and there was nothing she could do... 

The rise of nationalism was also troubling him; as a Jew he saw the rise of Nazis in Germany with alarm, and with the Nazi takeover in January 1933, he soon traveled to Germany, where his son Wissek was in a care home to take him out and take him to Amsterdam. This happened right after the Nazi euthanasia laws that led to the murder of thousands and thousands of people with disabilities. 

But things only appeared to get worse, and in August 1933 he visited Copenhagen and Niels Bohr, and in a private evening with Paul Dirac (who went on to win the Nobel prize later that same year) he appeared deeply troubled, and even expressed to a confused Dirac (who was not the best “people-person” in the world) that he had lost the will to live. p

It was to be a tragic prelude to what was to happen: On September 25th 1933 Ehrenfest traveled to Amsterdam to visit his son Wassik in the care home at the Waterink Institue. He proceeded to shoot his son and then shot himself in the head. 

The murder-suicide deeply affected the world’s leading scientists. But in my view also showed the mental struggles (I refuse to say "Instability”) of a brilliant mind and person. 

I am no Paul Ehrefest, but when reading the first chapter of Labatut’s book I just deeply identified with the mental problems, because mental health is a real issue, is a real problem, and not to made fun of as I have experienced here.

Beer never broke my Heart

 I have had my heart broken so many times that I think that there is not much left by a broken, rotten plump of meat. But one thing is real, is that beer has never broken my heart, just as Luke Combs sings in his fantastic song, which I have tried to make a small homage to:

My 2022 Lego Cristmas video

The story of this video: it was a spontaneous manuscript as I had prepared a different one, but I became inspired by my participation in the Budapest-Bamako rally this year, and even added many pictures of a lego car I brought along for the rally. 

Anyway, here it is:

Benedetti

 I recently visited the beautiful city of Montevideo, Uruguay, and dwelt into some of the famous writer who have called the city home: Eduardo Galeano, Horacio Quiroga, and not least among them the great poet and writer Mario Benedetti.

Besides his books and poems, Benedetti is admired for his immense number of one-liners that inspire and awaken. Many are about the passions that assault us when in love. Not just the unhappy kind, but more about the happy desperation that another person can cause in you, as in the following one-liner:

I was very happy, perhaps very inspired when I made the drawing (pencil and marker), giving it some crazy touches. Despite this imaginary woman having a beautiful smile, it will never compare with a real smile!