Guillermo Calvo
Bio
Former chair, Political Science, Government and International Relations Programs at the Universidad Autonoma de Manizales. My university degrees are in political science, law, international legal studies and translation studies.
Stories (23/0)
It’s Not as Painful as It’s Made Out to Be
Headlines concerning the Congressional Budget Office’s scoring of the proposed GOP replacement for Obamacare scream that 23 million Americans will be deprived of health care if it passes. As too often happens now, on a quotidian basis, the headlines are distortive, deceptive and hypocritical. They are designed to create emotional responses based on generating fear and insecurity and hate. They are designed to increase the divisiveness that so pervades us and in the end, to further lead us down the path to civil strife.
By Guillermo Calvo7 years ago in The Swamp
Rich or Russia
While the Rich family, for its own reasons, has succeeded in shutting down Fox News’ explorations concerning the murder of their son Seth, the issue is transcendental. It affects both international relations and constitutional governance. It impacts war and peace. It impacts liberty or liberty’s suppression. It requires resolution, whatever that resolution is, free from false reports but also free from suppression of relevant information.
By Guillermo Calvo7 years ago in The Swamp
Soliloquy In E Minor Sharp
"I'd really like to be drunk", he thought to himself, "but I've gained a lot of weight lately and I can't afford to gain anymore". It wasn't vanity, he just couldn't afford new clothes and he was pretty close to the "breaking point", at least according to his pants. He'd never gotten into non-alcoholic drugs and didn't feel like starting now, but he'd sure love to be high.
By Guillermo Calvo7 years ago in Humans
On the Evening of the Eighth Day
The One was gone. The created were also gone, but not of their own volition, although if lawyers had existed they’d have found a way to prove that it had been so. A second generation had been born and matured, a generation that had never known the One, other than in ritual, and had yet to meet the Other as their parents had. But a generation yet to be completed in an important manner.
By Guillermo Calvo7 years ago in Futurism
Primordial Beginnings
A preface of sorts, although the concept is then incongruous: “Without motion, time could not exist. The static is eternal, the dynamic bounded by time. Energy and matter, at their most elemental, require some space, or so it would seem, even if but infinitesimal”.
By Guillermo Calvo7 years ago in Futurism
Siestas are Interesting
There’s good news in the world but it seems weighted towards the Southern Hemisphere although it starts somewhat north of the Equator. A continent, artificially severed by a canal, curled around a three pronged spine. Long suppressed, exploited and despoiled, it has seemingly shaken its lethargy and from various umbrae is experimenting with innovative solutions to intractable problems. An aroma emerges, the scent of potential tranquility blended with equity and possibly, even joy. But it’s just a possibility, plausible only because of dark distractions almost everywhere else; very, very dark distractions; drawing in entropy, negativity and despair as though from the gravity well of a dead and decaying universe.
By Guillermo Calvo7 years ago in Wander
Questing in the Valley of the Lonely and the Lost
Questing in the Valley of the Lonely and the Lost The great adventures: the greatest adventures, the most daring and thus the most final. Will I ever dare them? If only for an instant, the smallest segment of a nanosecond perhaps?
By Guillermo Calvo7 years ago in Futurism
Clear and Present Dangers Staring Us in the Face
There are really only two political leaders I trust and their perspectives are very different but they’re both decent, well informed, honest people: Dennis Kucinich and Jim Webb. Coming from the real progressive left, former Congressman Kucinich’s criticism of the current efforts to stage a soft coup against President Trump, with whose policies he does not agree (a perspective I share), has real weight behind it (see here).
By Guillermo Calvo7 years ago in The Swamp
Divine Sentience
Sentience involves more than mere reaction to stimuli, it involves awareness of existence, but once aware, the sentient entity may be either passive, a voyeur of sorts, or volitional, in the latter case evolving a will and a desire to impose it. Humans are generally sentient in a range between passive and volitional but what about the divine, either as a singularity or as a class of entities? Assuming divinity in fact exists.
By Guillermo Calvo7 years ago in Futurism
Societal Maladies
Societal Maladies, How to Recognize and Treat Them, a Hypothesis It seems clear that society suffers from serious maladies that negatively impact honesty, decency and equitable and fair conflict resolution, especially in the United States. Observations during the past decade strongly imply that the cause of such evolving and expanding maladies can, in large part, be attributed to the creation, distribution and assimilation of a related series of very negative memes and memeplexes (see, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memeplex) propagated by and through our entertainment and news media (now in too many cases seemingly not a branch of journalism but rather of propaganda and entertainment) via the quotidian programming we are exposed to on television, the cinema, literature and the media (now including social media). Not exactly an epiphany of course, our grandparents warned their children about the subliminal evils of music and entertainment of which they did not approve (remember Elvis’ hips) but perhaps it’s past time to consider the issue from a new direction.
By Guillermo Calvo7 years ago in The Swamp