Vertigo

Vertigo is defined as the illusory sensation in which external things seem to be rotating or moving around you, or when it is you yourself who seems to be spinning in space and the rest remains motionless. It is fundamentally due to an alteration of the organs of hearing or the central nervous system which regulate balance. 

There is a specific case of vertigo; very famous for its danger among pilots qualified to fly with instruments, at night or in adverse weather conditions; it is known as instrument vertigo and is produced because during flight in such conditions, the centrifugal force in the turns can cause confusion in the vestibular system of the ear, which leads to a decrease in visual capacity.  

Moreover, in such cases, the pilot's proprioceptive system, which has a great influence on human orientation, is useless in indicating the spatial position of the pilot or the aircraft he is flying. It is therefore not at all uncommon for the pilot's own senses to mislead him and help him to become totally or partially disoriented, leading to irreversible situations and very serious accidents. 

For this reason, in order to avoid such problems, it is necessary to be in very good mental and physical condition, to carry out exhaustive training in simulators on the ground and in flight, and to be very aware - as a fundamental rule - that we must always pay attention to what the instruments tell us about height, course or orientation and degree of turn or climb and descent of the aircraft, and never think that our senses are the only ones in possession of certainty. 

This clarification serves as a syllogism for the degree of disorientation of our politicians in general, and of those in charge of the highest levels of government in particular, both on a global and European level and, fundamentally, in Spain, because despite the fact that the many reliable indicators, previous reports, analyses and future forecasts available to them indicate the opposite, they insist on implementing erroneous actions and policies in a faint-hearted and quite repeated manner.  

I have the feeling that in or for the conception, management and implementation of the necessary policies, mainly those related to the economy and social care, our leaders have entered into a total and absolute vertigo of instruments from which, for many, it is difficult to get out. 

The vast majority of them believe themselves to be in possession of the absolute truth; they try to find and apply "novel and masterly" formulas to try to solve already known problems, many of them known or carried over from the past and easily predictable or recognisable by a large number of people and organisations who are experts in these matters and who, with almost exclusive dedication, produce efficient recipes that often differ greatly from those applied by the former.  

This is a typical and very frequent situation when it comes to foreseeing, taking the necessary initial corrective measures or fully combating successive economic crises, wherever they may come from, although, depending on their origin, severity and degree of global extension, they have great differentiating nuances between them.   

The world has been immersed for many, too many years in trying to correct and combat the problems arising from climate change. Recently, we have once again been silent witnesses to yet another failure in the long and unproductive international summits to discuss the reality of climate change, the measures to be adopted, how they should be applied, when and to what degree of intensity or urgency.  

Personal or national interests, the idiosyncrasies of each country and the misgivings among the most polluting countries mean that everything is postponed sine die or to such a distant horizon that we can see that there is no clear intention to solve the problem and that the solution is left so far behind that none or very few of the parties to such commitments will still be active or have responsibilities at that time.   

The same is true of the handling and combating of the ever-growing refugee crises; the mass movements of people who are rushing into the world because they are hungry or thirsty, in search of work, protection from persecution of any kind, or simply decent and sufficient health care for themselves and their families.  

Movements which, in addition to being ever greater in total number of people and in emigration routes, due to the fact that they are used as camouflage routes by various religious and jihadist tendencies and terrorist groups, are becoming much more dangerous.  

Today, millions of poor outcasts on all continents are used as a means of ethnic cleansing, a money-making factory to make huge profits from their controlled movements or as a battering ram and shock force to destabilise neighbouring countries or their organisations without mercy or regard for the consequences.

Another of the big problems where governments can easily get into a dizzy spell are pandemics, their treatment and their fight against them. In the face of these unexpected and not so unexpected phenomena, leaders, especially those in Spain, are capable of taking all kinds of detours, ignoring specialists in the treatment of these situations and falling into beginner's errors, which even lead them to legislate in an unethical or unconstitutional manner, are subject to multi-million dollar frauds during urgent and heated procurement of equipment in the early stages, and make costly judgements and decisions both financially and in terms of the number of lives lost by doing so lightly or without real knowledge of the cause and the situation.     

The continuous economic, verbal, social and even pre-war confrontations to lead the world or an important region of it, or to occupy a preponderant position in the ranking of power, lead the leaders in the fray to take serious and very transcendental decisions that translate into unbridled arms races, cybernetic interference, threats and even threats of confrontation, threats and even threats of clashes with continuous, dangerous and costly deployments of forces and equipment at borders, which immediately result in sharp falls in stock markets and a deterioration of the economy, exports and the normal and necessary political, social and commercial relations between countries, associations of countries and even entire continents. 

In view of the above, it can be concluded that it is essential for political leaders to be and always to be in a very good mental and physical condition, to be aware of the instruments at their disposal - genuine, well-trained advisors and a real administration at the service of the state, not the government - and to really pay attention to all those indicators that seriously warn them that their botched or bad decisions are leading the country to perdition. 

On the other hand, there should be an urgent need for genuine political control mechanisms and inflexible courts or bodies with serious punitive powers to carry out an almost immediate and unappealable review of the actions of those in power, to prevent their constant dizziness, whether forced or not, from leading countries - like the one we are unfortunately close to - to situations of sterility, idleness and poverty that will be very difficult to overcome, if we ever manage to get out of this mess and quagmire.