Panama Papers and after-postmodern journalism

The investigative journalism focusing on the Panama Papers is a kind of after-postmodern journalism with more than 300 professionals around the world in a new kind of globalization, a globalization of transparency, a new step focusing on human values. Even discussions about “legal and illegal” things is part of a new after-postmodern exercise of citizenship.  

Are “Panama Papers” signs of “Macroshift” and “After-Postmodern” Era?

The things now named as “Panama Papers” maybe were “normal”, or “regular”, or “not so important” in postmodern times when “pragmatism, efficiency and results” were the more important criteria of values. So, something has happened in the beginning of the 21^st Century that is difficult to know exactly, but it seems an irreversible wave: the pendulum of history…

Among several crisis that show the end of old efficiencies, “Panama Papers” constitute a phenomena that has a kind of unpredictable “butterfly effect” over a once dreamt kind of globalization at the end of the 20^th century…

Crisis or not crisis: the big picture is the “Macroshift”

Professor Nouriel Roubini has written in the “Project Syndicate” about seven reasons for economic difficulties in 2016, although he does not agree that the 2008 crisis is back. 

If we look to all the historic events that happened since 2008, maybe we can recognize connections among several factors in many different countries in a way that we can use the Ervin Laszlo concept of “Macroshift”. 

Oil, sustainability, wars, stock markets, etc., all those things are showing that postmodern period of history is ending, or is even just past. 

What “after-postmodern era” means, we are still trying to understand, maybe we are more in a kind of transition "inside the Macroshift" than properly in a new era. 

Is there ambiguity about the after-postmodern environmental issues?

The post-modern efficiency is gone with the end of the 20^th century.

At those days environmental issues had been seen as “dreamer issues”.

The efficiency of those days was good enough to look at the environmental issues as something not useful, against the progress, even with some international agreement about it.

Nowadays, the world look for new efficiencies, the world has much more scientific knowledge than before, environmental issues does not seem so unrealistic.

Nevertheless, some ambiguity is still around…

We see new agreements, too much talking, but we feel yet something insecure in the air…

Is this ambiguity an ironical “residual matter” of post-modern era? Or it can be a signal of new ways to solve the environmental matter?

We do not have the answer for while…   

   

In after-postmodern times research can be animal-free

Since 2012, the Lush Prize supports animal-free testing. In 2015, one of the several awarded researchers was the Brazilian biologist Bianca Marigliani from The Federal University of Sao Paulo. She found a way to replace the use of fetal bovine serum, obtained from bovine fetuses during slaughter of pregnant cows. It is the most common animal-derivative used as medium supplement to several kind of researches. Beyond the ethical problems, the uses of this bovine serum can also misleading results concerning allergic reactions. The work of Marigliani proposes that the serum can be replaced by in vitro methods without animal suffering.

This work shows that the scientific research can, at the same time, preserve animals from suffering and improve the quality of biological products.  

Narrative Medicine is after-postmodern efficiency in healthcare

In the postmodern period of history, the advances in technology became the main way and objective in healthcare. So, anamnesis and physical examination were more and more let aside and almost ignored. It is important to recognize several achievements of that kind of thing. But, in human history, many times when we gain something, we lose something. That was the “trade” then in healthcare…

Nevertheless, in after-postmodern times, those efficiencies don’t work anymore. It is impossible to provide indifferently to everybody all kind of test without looking singularly to each person. It is not economically sustainable. Another thing is that when we look too much for the tests we lose the human contingencies or the human being as a whole. So, even the improvement of lifetime did not avoid the complaining of patients and health professionals about dehumanization in medicine. It seems that something is wrong, or something is missing…

Narrative Medicine is a way to recover something almost lost in health care, and beyond that it is a new paradigm. But, it is a paradigm inserted in Complex Thinking, Transdisciplinarity and the Singularity of Guattari. It is not an imposed paradigm, but a dialogical paradigm open to listening and discussion. It doesn’t deny the scientific advances but it situates them into the human context. 

After-postmodern was not predictable

A hundred years ago no one could expect, or predict, what could be the 21^st century in its very first decades.

Optimistic people dreamt about a great future with solutions for everything.

Eschatological predictions thought that could be foresighted apocalyptical events.

But the after-postmodern period seem to be something in between…

The Cybernetic development is beyond science fiction, but the picture that is in front of us is also beyond, but “beyond modern” and “beyond postmodern”… it is “post post-modern”…

A hundred years ago, modern people in modern times thought that “modernity” was something invincible, because it has the progress as a strong tool. But today we see that progress is a relative word that does not explain all reality.