The reality of all of us, both individual and collective, is filled with rational, but also irrational and bizarre elements. It has always been this way. Yet, history moves forward, the country moves forward, we, individually, move forward, sometimes backward, and this "progress" is still something.

It does not improve our standard of living, but enriches our experiences and knowledge, so that for a while we remember, we achieve something better, until we forget again. Even in the Bible, individuals and societies have forgotten sins so many times, paid for it, but the pendulum of remembering-forgetting with its positive and negative rewards sparks different fields of human temperament and cannot be avoided.

However, there are moments in the course of a country where developments reach extremes. Society freezes, rises, rebels. Yet, "when an entire country is screaming, we must howl to be heard." Paraphrasing Jean Jaures, "we left the flame and preferred the ashes."

The question "how did we go from 1974 to 2009" is fundamental to understand what we did, what we did not do, what (not) we should do and why. The country, in its history, has found itself at such points more than once.