Introduction to the “Study of Basic Income for the Principality of Pontinha”
When a close friend of mine told me not to get involved with Principado da Pontinha because it was a pipe dream I burst out laughing. Who am I to deny the possibility of turning dreams and utopias into reality? That is, who would I be if after having turned my own dream into reality, I switched over to the other side thereby denying this possibility to others? The Principality of Pontinha does not have funds, it does not have a population, it does not have the territory nor the support of any great Nation state. It is for the eyes of these great states and nations as these are for great national and transnational powers. However, the Quatinga Velho experience had even less, that is, it did not have any of that whatsoever, the place barely existed on the map, and it still does not exist in the blinkered eyes of many; but there, in that tiny place, a basic income is indeed a reality. Then, why not in Pontinha that is far more concrete and has already conquered much more, all of which before even having its basic income unconditional? How or why the Principality of Pontinha could not have it, as it infinitely has more potential to accomplish this project, if all it takes and lacks from other micro or macro nations it possesse; the sovereign willingness to actually carry out this program. Perhaps for those who are used to facilities, even at the price of their freedom; Pontinha has nothing, but for those who are scalded by the difficulties that freedom and independence demand, the Principality not only has all the potential that is required. It has all this potential and more to overcome the adversities that the mere sustenance of freedom demands, whether as a right of economic or political self-determination. For in reality, this mere abstraction which separates and disintegrates politicians’ economic right already constitutes the loss and consequent alienation of both along with their legitimate bearers in favor of a third party power to usurp them. Principality of Pontinha wisely understood what many great Continental Nations have not yet grasped: political and economic self-determination sovereignty are not requested, nor are they claimed, won and proclaimed. They are not given freely; they are constituted by the rights that are legitimately inalienable. In this, with or without the basic income, it is already an existing example to those who could accomplish much more — in being free and sovereign, prefer not to be those of submission and servitude.
In a roundabout way, people judge reality and what is real based on what is set and imposed. There are few who look into the future concerning what can or should be done, or remember that if it were not for these men, we would most certainly live in absolute safety … inside caves.
Dreaming and designing is not simply a question of creativity and imagination. It is a question of faith and willpower. Some content themselves with the mental joy of an idea, even in the knowledge that this is just fantasy and an escape from reality, a fetish. Others, on the contrary, embrace and content themselves with this, as a reality, even if all it can offer is suffering and a non-enjoyment of life, except for the enjoyment of the life of others. However, there are those who still have faith in human creativity and freedom. In the morning they are called utopians, in the afternoon, pioneers and at night, the parents of the already new reality that tomorrow will be old, and also, the mother of all the new ones. Without faith in their creativity the human-being is barren not of body but of soul.
Principality of Pontinha, may still have a tiny body if we compare it to the giants that still haunt the earth, but it possesses something that is priceless: a soul. It is this spirit that, like the invisible dreams in the eyes of the blind, by the material and materialism that move the world towards places not yet travelled and unknown, without which, the world map makes no sense: -the new worlds- , although hidden and forgotten within all the human and historical wealth of the old ones.
The poor is the one-dimensional man who thinks that beyond the limits of his horizon of events everything that awaits to sail dare to leave them is the abyss of nothingness. They do not seem to realize that they are doomed to live in the deepest emptiness and nullity of its dictatorship and dystopia. This, the fake reality as a projection of what is natural, the framework of the man still chained to the childhood of his humanity, to live shackled to the cavemen era. A big kid, with the spirituality of a child and without the maturity and wisdom of the old man who knows that life without the concreteness of dreams is a life of homesickness. Whether it is the longing for the future of countries that have never even had a gift, or the homesickness of the past of countries that once forgot the paths to the future.
The Principality of Pontinha is the port and ship. Poor is the man who does not manage to get everything that is meaningful and could become meaningful to them as they are doomed to live in galleys, either as a foreign stranger or a stranger in their own homeland.
