2014-02-22 From T.

2014-02-22

Carlos, good morning.

Congratulations!! For that first term that you have passed as a good Erasmus, not as some have led us to believe that you were, Erasmus students … Not even Flemish has been a problem, from what I see, which means that you have jumped into the pool since the first day, without fear of the waters and their turbulence.

Do not think I have many things to tell that you do not know or suppose. These last days, and I am going to continue like this until the writing of the paper is finished, I have dedicated the whole time to Leibniz or, more specifically, to deepen the conception of the will of God in Leibniz and in the government of the world. There I am, rummaging, with the magnifying glass on - and even the microscope -, alone with his texts, basting ideas and asking questions. I have gone from having things half clear to clarify myself conceptually, but to see how doubts grow in me about Leibniz himself and his philosophical environments. Right now, although I think I will not raise it in the congress - perhaps I can only point something - I have more and more doubts about the concept of God in Leibniz and in modern philosophy and, through them, about metaphysics, to which I still consider it a fundamental discipline, but whose content depends excessively on the medieval tradition. I leave it there, because you cannot walk with hypotheses and doubts.

Your lack of time - and everyone’s - is typical of our time and I am afraid it has been the fate of all the intellectuals who have populated the earth. In any case, in this time of weak, mercantile thought, lost amidst the superficiality of appearance, of manipulations everywhere, of manipulative and adolescent media, of palabreros, truhanes, mercachifles, in short, cynics; at this time, to the obligations and commitments of studies and knowledge, we usually combine the time-eater media, which dilute our time, the ability to think, manipulate us and even shape our moral conscience. In the face of all this - the liquid society that Bauman talks about - one must select a great deal and be faithful to the schedules that one has drawn up. (Bauman 2013) Liquid society liquidates… In other words, when you set timetables and follow them, you are on the right track. We usually fall, I have been, and I am a victim of this, in the temptation to peck at everything, which in the end leads us to delve little or nothing into almost nothing. If it works for you, you who are young can avoid the defects into which many have fallen.

There I continue with the essay reading workshop and forcibly committed to the Parkinson’s association, which is taking me much longer than I thought and wanted. At the moment, I have written the contents of the new website, which are mainly medical content, I have already visited a good number of official offices begging, as they say. You go into offices that have plenty of luxury to ask for something that is fair and whose responsibility is the administration, because those affected by Parkinson’s have to finance their therapies themselves, since Social Security washes their hands with them. But these sick people are there, with a degenerative disease that lacks a cure. Very strong, but real. They even have the association in some premises, an apartment on a ground floor, which some nuns have left for them. We are fighting there. Let’s see what we get. Look! The association is thirteen years old. I have my brother-in-law affected by Parkinson’s, who has had to take the presidency of the association, because they had led it to bankruptcy due to mismanagement and the malfunction - I am going to leave it only there - of some worker, especially the psychologist, who until now have not dared to put her on the street, as I think they should. As you see, I walk everywhere, but not as God but lost in what unknown worlds…

Well, Carlos, you do your thing. Learn in someone else’s head, in the head of those who, like me, lose themselves by multidisciplinarity - how good I am with myself! - and do not just “squeeze”, as the saying goes, in nothing. It is very important to delimit the territory well, since it will be life - the circumstances, Ortega would say – who will invite and even force you to dispersion.

I’m going to see if I practice a bit in the kitchen now … and surprise the family with something, although I don’t know with what …

Health, peace and happiness.

February 22, 2014

PS: I have made sea bass with a mushroom sauce. Well, it didn’t go wrong …

References

Bauman, Zygmunt. 2013. Liquid Modernity. John Wiley & Sons.