La igualdad ante la Ley

"La Ley, en su magnífica ecuanimidad, prohíbe, tanto al rico como al pobre, dormir bajo los puentes, mendigar por las calles y robar pan."
Anatole France

La estúpida espera de un milagro

"On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, the great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured –disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui– in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off. All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the cellar guzzling it, while up above in the street a phantom host touches the lips and the blood as pale as water. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige even of relief. Only ideas, pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the carcass is ripped open…

Somehow the realization that nothing was to be hoped for had a salutary effect upon me. For weeks and months, for years, in fact, all my life I had been looking forward to something happening, some extrinsic event that would alter my life, and now suddenly, inspired by the absolute hopelessness of everything, I felt relived, felt as though a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders…

Had one single element of man’s nature been altered, vitally, fundamentally altered, by the incessant march of history? By what he calls the better part of his nature, man has been betrayed, that is all."

Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

La fe

Aquí le leí a Chaves esta frase genial:

La fe, esa prótesis de la voluntad y la razón.

Me sirvo de ella para resumir mi posición (a riesgo de discriminación laboral) sobre la fe en este país católico fundamentalista, en el que el otro día me espetaron desafiantes mientras meaba "¿usted cree en Dios?".

No tengo problemas con la fe de los otros, mientras no sirva de prótesis a la voluntad y la razón. El problema que tengo es que cada vez más parece que esa es su única función.

Mr. Kurtz

"You should have heard him say, `My ivory.' Oh yes, I heard him. `My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my--' everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him-- but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible--it was not good for one either--trying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land-- I mean literally. You can't understand. How could you?-- with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbors ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums--how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammeled feet may take him into by the way of solitude--utter solitude without a policeman-- by the way of silence, utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbor can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong--too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil: the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil-- I don't know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place-- and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won't pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other. The earth for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with smells too, by Jove!--breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated. And there, don't you see? Your strength comes in, the faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in--your power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an obscure, back-breaking business. And that's difficult enough. Mind, I am not trying to excuse or even explain--I am trying to account to myself for--for--Mr. Kurtz-- for the shade of Mr. Kurtz."

"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision,--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath--

"`The horror! The horror!' "

Conrad

el pacifismo tico y otros cuentos

El conflicto en la frontera ha revelado o reafirmado ciertas cosas: el cuento del pacifismo tico es eso, un cuento, la violencia acumulada está explotando peligrosamente; el enemigo externo es el mejor aliado de un mal gobierno (hoy hasta fantasmas aparecieron en casa presidencial para llamar a la "unión monolítica"); los que critican al gobierno de laura por arista, están mamando, será malo, pero será por otras cosas, porque claramente laurita y oscar no se pueden ni ver en este momento (ella no fue al cumpleaños de él, y él aprovechó para llamarla malagradecida, pues si hubiera querido habría puesto a Guillermo Zúñiga como presidente. Así está tal cual en la Revista Poder de octubre, de la derecha y que la izquierda debería leer); Daniel Ortega es un impresentable, como le dijo Henry a Luis Mora Rodriguez, y si los narcos dirigen las relaciones exteriores de Costa Rica, no hay duda que Venezuela las de Nicaragua; la diplomacia costarricense actuó demasiado tarde; Repretel es una mierda; pero sobre todo, que tanto aquí como allá, hay suficiente gente sensata como para hacer una diferencia.

Desecho Internacional

"Desde luego, según la terminología aquí aceptada (como conveniente) no puede en realidad designarse como derecho a un orden que sólo esté garantizado por la expectativa de la reprobación y de las represalias de los lesionados... y que carezca de un cuadro de personas especialmente destinado a imponer su cumplimiento."

Max Weber, Conceptos Sociológicos Fundamentales.

Manipulaciones nacionalistas

"Muchos de los problemas de la política práctica se plantearían de otra manera si no existiera una ideología tan apelmazada sobre nuestra condición excepcional y nuestras virtudes democráticas. Cuando se hacen llamados a defender los "valores de nuestros abuelos", o "las nobles tradiciones democráticas que heredamos" firmamos, de manera imprudente, un cheque en blanco. El nacionalismo de la excepción, el nacionalismo apelando a la democracia, la igualdad y la paz, nos inviste de una identidad confusa, funcional la mayor parte de las veces a quienes tienen el poder, la cual impide registrar lo que debería ser visto, y actuar más acorde con las convicciones democráticas que decimos proferir."

Manuel Solis, La Institucionalidad Ajena.

Guerra por la Salud Pública

Ya ni tiempo hay de enterrar a los muertos. Cuando los ataúdes grises de los 14 muchachos asesinados el viernes en Ciudad Juárez aún estaban abiertos, otro grupo de sicarios -también amparado en la noche y la impunidad- irrumpió en un centro de desintoxicación de drogadictos de Tijuana, formó a 13 de los internos junto a una tapia y los fusiló con armas de alto poder. Unos minutos más tarde, los autores de la matanza intervinieron la frecuencia de la policía y, sobre un fondo de narcocorridos, profirieron una amenaza: "Esto apenas empieza. Habrá 135 asesinatos". Un muerto por cada tonelada de marihuana que las autoridades decomisaron y quemaron hace solo unos días.

Completo

Our 'war on drugs' has been an abysmal failure

It is wrecking the government of Mexico. It is financing the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is throwing 11,000 Britons into jail. It is corrupting democracy throughout Latin America. It is devastating the ghettoes of America and propagating Aids in urban Europe. Its turnover is some £200bn a year, on which it pays not a penny of tax. Thousands round the world die of it and millions are impoverished. It is the biggest man-made blight on the face of the earth.

No, it is not drugs. They are as old as humanity. Drugs will always be a challenge to individual and communal discipline, alongside alcohol and nicotine. The curse is different: the declaration by states that some drugs are illegal and that those who supply and use them are criminals. This is the root of the evil.

Completo