Repetition and decomposition

Even when we're too busy to follow in depth the horrifying things brought to us by the news and social media, we always end up seeing something. And nothing changes. It's the same, always. A president attacking the democratic institutions of a republic, again. Violence and intolerance continue to kill people left and right. Even things that actually change already happened in the past. For example: the Taliban took over Afghanistan... again, after twenty years.

Whoever lives two or three generations, feels like the spectator who, during the fair, sees the performances of all kinds of jugglers and, if he remains seated in the booth, sees them repeated two or three times. As the tricks were meant only for one performance, they no longer make any impression after the illusion and novelty have vanished. ¹

Painting by Zdzislaw Beksinski.

The tragedies continue, they are renewed, updated. Some diseases are cured and some evils are rectified, but new diseases and new evils appear, or the old ones come back in some form. But for the hopeful the struggle is worth it. Besides, everything is worth it when our spirits are up, isn't that right?

If we were to conduct the most hardened and callous optimist through hospitals, infirmaries, operating theatres, through prisons, torture-chambers, and slave-hovels, over battlefields and to places of execution; if we were to open to him all the dark abodes of misery, where it shuns the gaze of cold curiosity, and finally were to allow him to glance into the dungeon of Ugolino where prisoners starved to death, he too would certainly see in the end what kind of a world is this meilleur des mondes possibles. ²

And even so, most hopeful people don't open their eyes. Even so, the need to affirm the world is so much that, even while recognizing the horror show that surrounds us, the hopeful still seek to establish roots in a world where nothing lasts, everything melts, everything decomposes. And to make matters worse, we still have the evils brought to us by humanity, which preys on itself. We act as if we're incapable of stopping even the worse oppressions and poverty even though we are fully capable, and that betrays traces of sadism in us.

“What do you mean everyone should have a roof over their heads and not starve to death? Impossible! That's an utopia!” say the sociopaths dressed as technocrats, those who think it is normal that there are people starving and homeless during the richest time in human history. However, those that recognize that it is possible to make the human world less terrible don't fare much better. They recognize pain and suffering derived from poverty and human oppression, but they don't recognize that there exists pain and oppression in existence itself. Pain and oppression are knitted in the fabric of existence.

And even when they do recognize this, their hope is such that they believe it is worth establishing roots and fight for a space in which consciousness can thrive. “Even if we can't put an end to natural evils, we're capable of making a better human world, even if the struggle lasts a thousand generations!” they say. They are able to realize that the human world could be less terrible, but they're unable to understand that this doesn't mean that we should try if, in order to succeed, it is necessary to create new consciousness.

To generate new consciousness in this hell isn't an act of struggle or courage or hope, it is just an evil or misguided act. Maybe it would be necessary to reach utopia before some individuals realize that the oppression caused by ourselves is just one example among infinite other kinds, and even so they might not comprehend it. It is of no use to try and paint over reality and pretend it is better than what lies underneath the fresh paint, but that's what people keep doing, over and over again. It's what's left for them.

Certainly human life, like all inferior goods, is covered on the outside with a false glitter; what suffers always conceals itself. On the other hand, everyone parades whatever pomp and splendour he can obtain by effort, and the more he is wanting in inner contentment, the more he desires to stand out as a lucky and fortunate person in the opinion of others. Folly goes to such lengths... ³

Nothing is worth it, that's what we should say. But it's of no use to talk or write about this. Nothing changes. People will remain doing what they've always done. All we can do is talk to the void.

by Fernando Olszewski

__________________

¹ Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena.

² Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation.

³ Ibid.