"To return ... with a withered face, the snows of time have turned silver my templea ..." I'm not tango devotee, nor a fan of Carlos Gardel, but there are lyrics that say it all and this one, upon returning from a trip to South America (and cybernetically reconnecting with former school classmates as a result of the emergency of one), feels appropriate.
No, I don't long to return. That's only the paradox Thomas Wolfe (not the modern Tom Wolfe) proposed in his novel You Can't Go Home Again, which is, ultimately, a version of the rejection of Jesus in his childhood Nazareth. We can't go back. Or as they sang after World War I, "How ya gonna keep'em
down on the farm, after they've seen Paree?"
I "returned" to São Paulo, where I never lived but had visited before. I have relatives in Brazil, as I have in many other countries. To that was added a brief stop in Bogotá. Furthermore, I "returned" once already via the cyberworld while remaining on the terra firma of the good ol' U.S. of A., after hearing via email of a temporary health crisis (the reader is welcome to thank the god of choice) of a former classmate.
Sometimes distance from the daily occurrences of even people and places we know let us discern differences that have happened to them over time. Call it the Rip Van Winkle Outsider Effect, if you will.
Bogotá, for example, no longer has those packs of street urchins engaged in begging or street vending. Or perhaps they hide them better today from the tourists. You do see in their place some grungy old and obviously very poor men. Are they the children of yesteryear grown old? At least their descendants don't seem to lead similar lives.
São Paulo has always been a thriving hub of commerce. I was amazed that its newyorkization (all Latin American cities aspire, in my view foolishly, to have New York skyscrapers) is not absurdly functional. Instead of the square, sterile and high blocks, the Paulistas have been concerned to build modern art objects.
Sure, being in the country of architectural genius Oscar Niemeyer gives them some incentive to avoid modernizing without rhyme or reason. But I can declare: modern Paulista buildings have a grace that is not found even in the big cities of the First World. Really!
While the consensus among those with whom I spoke is that the economic miracle of Lula is fading (and the efforts of Dilma to build stadiums for the World Cup has been an inexcusable waste), it is still remarkable that Brazil's poverty fell from 22% in 2002 to 9% in 2012 As a point of comparison, in the United States, the rate is 15%, having never dropped below 11%.
These rapid declines are slowing. Perhaps it's like dieting.
Of course, the Third World poverty based on poor or unevenly accessed infrastructure persists. You see people in the 21st century still without electricity, power, fresh drinking water and weather-worthy housing. That's not to mention the social problems that are of a more First World type, such as education, work and opportunity.
And there is the kind of return.
I got a mass email from my secondary school "litter" announcing that a former classmate was in intensive care and suddenly saw names that had never been in my inbox before. They were people whose names evoke a variety of experiences in my youth.
Other names, of course, yield nothing. ("This guy attended school with me?")
Then there's the fact that at a certain age, the numbers begin to diminish. Five of my fiftysomething classmates have died. Any day now, I is listed among them.
We are not intimates, except for two or three who kept up a friendship through the years. There's at least one who is not in the list and I don't want to see even if it is only an email address. Yet for better or worse, all of us are part of each other's youth.
In my case they are men (I went to a boys' school, where the existence of beings called "girls" was mostly theoretical) who are intelligent, vigorous that have managed to stay afloat despite everything that has happened to Argentina since 1968.
(Yes, I know, some readers were not alive then. You are forgiven.)
It occurs to me that many of my concerns will be echoed in theirs. The values that were instilled in us are the same. The intellectual reference points are, in essence, the same.
We will have had failures. You can't reach a certain age without failing; the absence of failure yields no success. I would have liked to say that my former colleagues and I made the world better, as we once expected. But no.
All these things make returning to people and place in the past desirable and undesirable at the same time, leaving a bittersweet taste. Nostalgia has pulled us back to a
reality that somehow did not welcome us or serve us well enough to keep us there.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Why "innocent"? The Malaysia Air passengers had no foibles like anyone else?
It riles me no end to read and hear the drumbeat of "innocent" passengers killed in the Malaysia Air plane over the Ukraine. Without any disrespect intended to the dead (although, why not, since we don't particular honor the living?), I am sure that these people all had their moral failures; including the children.
This happens with annoying regularity. Yet what makes people killed randomly innocent?
Gazans and Israelis do not cheat on taxes or their mates? Boston Marathon bombing victims had never cheated in school or failed to come to a full stop at a stop sign? And don't get me started on the scummy bond traders who died in 9/11!
The same applies to children who, any truthful parent or teacher will testify, are selfishly wilfull.
All right, you might say that these people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, were innocent with respect to the conflicts that caused their deaths. But were they?
Conflicts in the Middle East and the Chechnya did not occur in isolation to everything else. Certainly, also, the largest economy in the world, the United States, is in some respect dependent on almost every corner of the planet.
For example, when something grievous has happened in the Middle East, we have to think of our oil interests. Surely some oil company has profited and its employees have purchased something that has spurred economic activity that in some way has splashed upon us directly or indirectly.
As Dick Gregory once told a Canadian who claimed to be uninvolved in Vietnam, "Did you pay sales tax on those socks you're wearing?" When the young man admitted he had, Gregory went on to show in a complicated train of events I have long forgotten how those taxes freed resources for war.
We are all much more interconnected today than we were in the 1970s, when Gregory's remark was made. No one is entirely unconnected to what happens in Gaza, the Ukraine and elsewhere. We all in some way continue to thrive in the global human system that makes these events happen.
There are no innocents. Indeed, long ago one Augustine of Hippo proposed the theory of "original sin" (or original concupiscence) as an explanation of the reality that, even at birth, we are all culpable. The rich baby effectively exploits the poor baby born the same second, taking a greater share of resources than, strictly speaking, are his or her due.
None of us is an island. We are all in some way responsible for everything and have the duty to stop the bad and increase the good. To the extent we fail at either, we are guilty of moral failure.
There were no innocents on the Malaysia Air flight as there will not be in the next tragedy that occurs.
This happens with annoying regularity. Yet what makes people killed randomly innocent?
Gazans and Israelis do not cheat on taxes or their mates? Boston Marathon bombing victims had never cheated in school or failed to come to a full stop at a stop sign? And don't get me started on the scummy bond traders who died in 9/11!
The same applies to children who, any truthful parent or teacher will testify, are selfishly wilfull.
All right, you might say that these people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, were innocent with respect to the conflicts that caused their deaths. But were they?
Conflicts in the Middle East and the Chechnya did not occur in isolation to everything else. Certainly, also, the largest economy in the world, the United States, is in some respect dependent on almost every corner of the planet.
For example, when something grievous has happened in the Middle East, we have to think of our oil interests. Surely some oil company has profited and its employees have purchased something that has spurred economic activity that in some way has splashed upon us directly or indirectly.
As Dick Gregory once told a Canadian who claimed to be uninvolved in Vietnam, "Did you pay sales tax on those socks you're wearing?" When the young man admitted he had, Gregory went on to show in a complicated train of events I have long forgotten how those taxes freed resources for war.
We are all much more interconnected today than we were in the 1970s, when Gregory's remark was made. No one is entirely unconnected to what happens in Gaza, the Ukraine and elsewhere. We all in some way continue to thrive in the global human system that makes these events happen.
There are no innocents. Indeed, long ago one Augustine of Hippo proposed the theory of "original sin" (or original concupiscence) as an explanation of the reality that, even at birth, we are all culpable. The rich baby effectively exploits the poor baby born the same second, taking a greater share of resources than, strictly speaking, are his or her due.
None of us is an island. We are all in some way responsible for everything and have the duty to stop the bad and increase the good. To the extent we fail at either, we are guilty of moral failure.
There were no innocents on the Malaysia Air flight as there will not be in the next tragedy that occurs.
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
Happy Real Independence Day
Cecilieaux is off for the holiday, but he left behind his now-traditional Independence Day blog post. Happy 2nd!
Today, July 2nd, rather than July 4th, is the actual day that independence of the territories that were to become the United States from Britain was first approved. This came in the form of a resolution that attorney Richard Henry Lee, a Virginian, proposed to the Second Continental Congress.
The brief document read:
The motion was approved by 12 of the 13 colonies. Indeed, John Adams, of Massachusetts, who seconded Lee's proposal, was so certain that a great step had been taken that he wrote to his wife Abigail:
Now, 238 years later, the festival is held on the 4th, when the delegates approved the wordier, some would say grander, announcement of the decision by Thomas Jefferson, who composed it in the absence of Lee, who had rushed back to Virginia due to his wife's illness.
In honor of someone born on this great day, however, let us fire off an imaginary firecracker.
Today, July 2nd, rather than July 4th, is the actual day that independence of the territories that were to become the United States from Britain was first approved. This came in the form of a resolution that attorney Richard Henry Lee, a Virginian, proposed to the Second Continental Congress.
The brief document read:
Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.
That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.
The motion was approved by 12 of the 13 colonies. Indeed, John Adams, of Massachusetts, who seconded Lee's proposal, was so certain that a great step had been taken that he wrote to his wife Abigail:
The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.
Now, 238 years later, the festival is held on the 4th, when the delegates approved the wordier, some would say grander, announcement of the decision by Thomas Jefferson, who composed it in the absence of Lee, who had rushed back to Virginia due to his wife's illness.
In honor of someone born on this great day, however, let us fire off an imaginary firecracker.
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