You might see some memes I publish in Portuguese that appear to be funny: you won’t know because of the language. They are sarcastic, ironic, therefore, a bit more to the left of the aggressiveness continuum.
In English, you will see me using nonsense and polite irony – never open sarcastic attacks.
This belongs to the category of style, battle and image choice. All these choices are at some level collective: you make them almost as much as they are made for you.
Here in the USA I have found a comfortable place closest to the neutrality, objectiveness and serenity extreme. I chose not to engage in controversy, but I might engage in well ruled, clear, objective and respectful argument.
Leaving Brazil has a myriad of meaning to me. One of them is “unchoosing” conflict. It doesn’t mean omission in face of iniquity. It means I am now free to choose my weapons in the battles I pick.
In Brazil, I still use sarcasm, and I am good at it. Few people can combine science with sarcasm like I do. It gets thousands of followers, hundreds of “likes” and shares. Maybe it would get those here, too. Everybody knows that engaging in controversy is the number one rule to promote yourself as a battle leader (or a guru).
That’s not what I want here in the United States. I don’t want to be a guru and I don’t want blind following. I want and I will be respected because this is what I offer my readers, my students and the people that choose to follow me. Between the many hats I can use, I chose that of the educator, of the science “translator”, of the coach and of the person of service.
Yes, there are charlatans, fraudsters or simple opportunists out there. I choose “live and let die” for them. I understand they will have a huge following – I don’t have a solution for such powerful mass phenomena.
Brazil is a complicated place and I have unfinished business there. I have a few debts to collect. A few ugly battles to win, and I am winning. And I have more than one project to protect from unscrupulous adversaries.
Although life is far from simple and peaceful here yet (no beginning is, especially this one), I chose peace.