Category: Articles
China compared with Western Democracy
China compared with Western Democracy Written by Alfonso Elizondo At present, China is displacing the United States as the leading economic power and is preparing to establish the superiority of its hybrid political model that clearly distinguishes it from Western democracies. Just a few days ago, at the XIX Congress of the Chinese…
East Asian Values
East Asian Values Written by Alfonso Elizondo The exaggerated emphasis that conservative autocratic politicians now place on their political actions is an attempt to obstruct the process of emancipation taking place within their societies. This is how the new democratic forces in the Asian region see the current discourse on Confucianism and they reject…
On the Current World Crisis (II)
On the Current World Crisis (II) Written by Alfonso Elizondo The serious political crisis afflicting Western capitalism today was not created by Putin but by US bankers who, by taking advantage of deregulation and financial interconnectedness, dragged the world economy into the 2008 debacle. After that crisis, the top US politicians refused to introduce…
China vs. the United States
China vs. the United States Written by Alfonso Elizondo According to BBC World, the trade surplus in favor of China is close to 347 billion dollars a year and it would be wiped out by an escalation in protectionism in the world’s two largest economies in the case of a conflict between them. Consequently,…
E-commerce is growing
E-commerce is growing Written by Alfonso Elizondo Electronic commerce is booming in Latin America. The growth in the use of the internet and social networks increases the opportunities for companies that sell online. According to Worldpay, online sales will grow by 19% in the next five years, much more than the global average…
Towards a Vegan Diet
Towards a Vegan Diet Written by Alfonso Elizondo According to experts in environmental sciences, current climate change is seen as the greatest challenge to the survival of humanity and it is the most serious ‘environmental threat’ in the world. The main cause of this phenomenon is the production of meat that is contaminated and…
Towards New Paradigms
Towards New Paradigms Written by Alfonso Elizondo While human society was evolving over hundreds of thousands of years, all the animals existing on the Planet underwent a very complex and very variable adaptation process in which climate change played the most important role. It could be said that another fundamental element of anthropological, biological…
Islamic Ethics
Islamic Ethics Written by Alfonso Elizondo The ethics of Islam is not individualistic; it is about wisdom and free opinion; it is speculative without having recourse to tradition or concrete practice. It is both theoretical and practical. On the one hand, there is a cognitive tradition, and on the other there are…
Non-Western Ethical Systems
Non-Western Ethical Systems Written by Alfonso Elizondo The classical period in China falls between 550 and 200 BC, which is equivalent to the High Middle Ages in the West. While Western metaphysics speaks about reason and belief or about passion and desire, during that same period China was eminently social and its ethics translates into…
The Divine Origin of Political Power
The Divine Origin of Political Power Written by Alfonso Elizondo Since the last decades of the fourth century, Christianity had been persecuted and banned in the Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages Christian thinkers imagined that the power of rulers came from God. These thinkers believed that power was divided by the will of…
Origins of Western Culture
Origins of Western Culture Written by Alfonso Elizondo All experts on the cultural myths of the West agree that its collective thinking is grounded in the fusion of Christianity and Greek thought from Pericles and Plato to Aristotle. It is a rational way of thinking now known as the ‘scientific method,’ which was subsequently adopted…
Origin and Survival of the Human Being
Origin and Survival of the Human Being Written by Alfonso Elizondo Nearly 50,000 years ago, a small group of men and women who survived a bitter ice age left Africa in search of food. Two thousand generations later and with a world population of 7 billion, it is difficult to believe that this…
New Digital Age
New Digital Age Written by Alfonso Elizondo In this 21st century a new era has begun in the world in which the main changes have been the replacement of the military might of the great powers by the use of ‘social ethics’, the rapid transformation of global trade and trade routes, artificial intelligence taking over…
A Fragmented World at War
A Fragmented World at War Written by Alfonso Elizondo A few days ago, in a brief article titled ‘A Globalized and Fragmented World’, the brilliant French sociologist Alain Touraine stated that the world has changed a lot in the last 20 years and has become a new habitat for the human species in…
Alibaba and Amazon: The 2 new large retailers
Alibaba and Amazon: The 2 new large retailers Written by Alfonso Elizondo Information and analytics are essential for both Alibaba and Amazon, although they are used in different ways: while Amazon uses their data to refine their product and service offerings based on consumer buying patterns, and helps to share data with sellers to…
US democracy turns into cruelty
US democracy turns into cruelty Written by Alfonso Elizondo When the democratic model began to develop in ancient Greece, there were very contradictory situations in its entire geographical space which, to some extent, can be considered antithetical to the freedoms and benefits that this utopian model of the State would supposedly have created. The…
A Different Analysis of the Current Crisis
A Different Analysis of the Current Crisis Written by Alfonso Elizondo In general, those who do the economic analyses of countries and the world as a whole are economists for whom all commercial operations and how the world works depend on existing supply and demand, both at the level of large corporations and at the…
Collapse of Contemporary Society
Collapse of Contemporary Society Written by Alfonso Elizondo According to experts who study the environmental and economic problems facing countries that make up the current political system of the planet, there are problems that cannot be avoided, such as human-made climate change, the increase in toxic products in the environment, the shortage of drinking…
Towards a New World Order: Robotization
Towards a New World Order: Robotization Written by Alfonso Elizondo In order to get a view of this social phenomenon of global proportions that is happening right now I have turned to the brilliant ideas of Yuval Noah Harari, historian and professor at the University of Jerusalem, who thinks that as robotics and the digital…
Megalomania, Xenophobia and Narcissism in the 21st Century
Megalomania, Xenophobia and Narcissism in the 21st Century Written by Alfonso Elizondo In the late eighteenth century (1786), the aristocrats of the French imperial nation-state formulated a new political model aimed at improving the social condition of the poor classes, creating a larger middle class and doing away with. To this…
The New Chinese Empire
The New Chinese Empire Written by Alfonso Elizondo The new Chinese Empire became a reality in the last 30 years with the death of Mao in 1976 and the assumption of supreme power by Deng Xiaoping in 1979. The Empire is fortified by the application of a hybrid political model that enables its…
Germany Reinvents Democracy
Germany Reinvents Democracy Written by Alfonso Elizondo After the September 24 elections in Germany in which social democracy was defeated, many questions have been raised, one of which is the issue of the creation of a true social democracy that privileges politics over market forces. In the new German parliament there are now 7…
China and Russia vs. United States (II)
China and Russia vs. United States (II)Written by Alfonso Elizondo Although Washington’s movements in Eurasia are nothing new, the scenario with China moving to become the leading world economy is. And this is threatening to overturn the maritime geopolitics that has shaped global power for the last 400 years. Instead of focusing on building an…
China and Russia vs. the United States (I)
China and Russia vs. the United States (I)Written by Alfonso Elizondo At the height of its imperial power in 1900, Great Britain ruled the sea in the Eurasian world with a fleet of 300 warships and 30 naval bases, surrounding the great Eurasian ‘World Island’ from Scopa Flow in the North Atlantic across the…
Contemporary Mythology (II)
Contemporary Mythology (II) Written by Alfonso Elizondo Another very important contemporary myth is that GDP reflects the well-being of a country. The term ‘wealth’ has had many meanings throughout the history of humanity: political power, social importance, possession of objects called treasures and value, whether intrinsic or in terms of the satisfaction it provides…
Contemporary Mythology (I)
Contemporary Mythology (I) Written by Alfonso Elizondo In order to be able to live in society, the members of a group of people have to reach agreements to enable individual and collective development. Therefore, there is need for a common language that allows for communication, relationships and exchange because for there to be communication, it…
From Nomads to Settlers
From Nomads to Settlers Written by Alfonso Elizondo Most anthropologists, biologists and naturists today believe that the discovery of agriculture was the main factor that led to the ultimate settlement of primitive human beings in a given area. The domestication of different species of wild plants which were later cultivated, were two factors of great…
Involution of Democracy in the West
Involution of Democracy in the WestWritten by Alfonso Elizondo Countries in the West and their allies are now experiencing the rapid demise of democracy. ‘Soft power’ is becoming more effective than military power and the manipulation of consciousness through the force of the ‘mass media’ has been replacing the armies of the great…
Spain’s False Democracy
Spain’s False Democracy Written by Alfonso Elizondo Pío Moa’s recent book titled The Civil War and the Problems of Democracy offers an excellent analysis of the major problems of Spain’s democracy in relation to its internal conflict. Moa says that the underlying problem is that neither the right nor the left has ever…
Current Climate Chaos
Current Climate ChaosWritten by Alfonso Elizondo According to Dominique Bourg, professor of the Institute of Soil Policy and the Urban Environment of the Faculty of Geosciences and Environment, whose research interests are: ecological thinking and sustainable development, technology assessment and risk management, the precautionary principle, public debate and ecological democracy. Bourg believes that changing…