2013-11-11 to 13. From T.
Carlos, good morning.
I read your letter at dawn, I have reread it afterward, and in both moments I have been worried. I had to take the dog out and clean the house, so I delayed sending you a first response. I have to write slowly, and this morning I have it a bit complicated, with some commitment that cannot be postponed. I hope to sit down this afternoon so I can send you an answer that can help you. For now, I just want you to feel that your mail has not gone to outer space and that its recipient is entangled with other things as if friends did not occupy the first step of life at the level of priorities. Leibniz, Pierre Bayle, and some other things can wait. While I sit down and order my head a little, it occurs to me to send you a couple of readings that I hope will help you to reconsider some things, especially that dark and pessimistic tone in which your letter moves. The risk of depression is always there, close to the edge of any step. It’s what it takes to be human. But depression is a disease, I’m not going to be the one to analyze it to the psychologist you are and who understand it well. You know very well where and how you are, and I am very happy that you come out of yourself and that you trust your friends, in me, although I am not sure that it will be able to be that crutch that will help you to walk. I will try, although you know very well that the way you have to walk it yourself; the others will not be more than a minor walking stick in the best of the cases.
Searching in my memory for things that I have read and that can serve you, I have thought about authors like Bertrand Russell, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, and who has been one of the most important mathematicians and philosophers of the 20th century. He wrote with a wonderful English. There I send you a Spanish version and the original in English of his Conquest of happiness(Bertrand 1930), in case you want to practice English, with the literature and the thought of someone who had a very complicated life, more difficult than it seems at first sight, but that always maintained the control of himself and the pulse of life. The second reading is by Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope, whose original English I do not have and not found on the Internet, to download for free. Anyway, I hope that the Spanish copy will be useful. I hope these readings serve you, which I imagine will counterbalance Bukowski’s stark realism. Writers write how they live, although some say they are transfigured. Bukowski is a clear example of how a writer manifests in his literature as he lives, and the life of this person was not exactly an interesting life or deserving of imitation, although it has contributed to literature a work that deserves to be analyzed. But not all readings are the most appropriate at any time. The same thing happens with music: there is music for every instant or, better, for every moment, situation or state of mind. I would balance a depressive mood with Mozart or Haydn, for example. In any case, depending on how you see yourself, you may have to seek help and put a lot of effort on your part to get out of depression.
Well, let’s see if this afternoon I can sit with time ahead and I can answer you from the rationality and with the heart in the hand.
When I tried to attach Russell’s file in English, I saw that it is very large, so I can not send it to you in this same email, which has a sending limitation of ten megabytes; therefore, I send it to you in another email.
A hug.
Figure 11: Leuven (Belgium), October, 2013: I was happy when I settle down. I had my new NorthFace backpack and I was ready to ride around. However, things went differently…
T.,
Thank you very much for your very quick response and your concern for me. I go to the library to read Russell (I have an e-book, but it is for occasions when the paper is scarce). I think that is exactly what I was looking for. I hope it does not take more than a couple of days to read it. I’ll tell you if it’s making a mark on my character.
The road is walked alone. And you sent me a pair of good shoes to start walking. If you have priorities, accomplish them. I’ll be busy with Russell and Fromm.
Health and thanks.
Carlos
Carlos, good morning. We have a sunny morning around here; I hope you can also enjoy a sunny day and, above all, I hope and wish that today you are better than three days ago when I received your letter. I send you in Word format the answer to your letter. I do not know if I have elaborate on it too much, I simply hope that my meditations can serve you, although I know that in those, as in yours, I address many questions. With that purpose, I have written it. It has taken me longer than I would have liked and what I envisioned three days ago, but I have not been able to finish it before. I hope to see you soon, to be able to drink coffee together - you know, I will take a small juice… Oh! I should not say it, but you know that you have me at your complete disposal.
A hug.
Valladolid, 11 November 2013
Carlos, good afternoon.
I have carefully read your letter, which is very intense and sincere. It has no waste because in it you perform an exercise of sincerity, which only fits when you address the person with which you have full confidence and when the inner voice not only does not stifle but remains and even increases. This exercise of communicating our problems allows us to look into a mirror and we can analyze them and do it with ourselves with some objectivity. Moreover, this exercise, which manifests the need to face problems head-on, indicates decision and intelligence, qualities that you have always had. You can be sure that, even if you do not ask me in your letter, I will keep absolute confidentiality regarding the content of it.
It’s not easy to get started, because you approach your personal circumstance in your letter in a complex way, and the answer can’t be easy. Everything we do has significance and reading has a lot of it. No reading is inconsequential to the reader; there’s always something that, like fine rain, soak through. The readings, moreover, do not wet the skin but are directed to our sensitivity and understanding. Surely, the psychological procedure becomes in that order and is first directed to our emotional, and not rational, the sensibility, to face our understanding later. But the traces of situations, approaches, ideas, language, and even the style that appear in books somehow permeate our sensitivity. There are books - novels, essays, poems - for all tastes and situations, but not all are suitable at any time in our lives. There is always something to which, consciously or unconsciously, we are inclined to read one thing and not another. When reading for pure pleasure and not for an academic obligation, for example, we must choose readings according to the inclinations or needs we have at each moment. All the works are interesting, but this does not force us to suffer from their reading; there must always be enjoyment in it, and something else, we must seek to read while keeping intact the ability to distance ourselves from the content of what we read. It is the only way for us to soak in reading, but for us and not the author to do it through our sensibility. In addition, it is the way for us to make the most of what we read. That estrangement, that kind of necessary epojé makes us smarter (from Latin intus legere, read the content inside it, penetrate its interiority), that is, it allows us to reveal how much is structural and hidden in what we read. I know it’s very easy to get involved in the content of reading, especially when we have a great story in our hands. But the story is great because it serves as a vehicle for complex and deep content; these are what’s interesting about the novel or the poems. I think we suffer from a certain educational or formative deformation, derived from the way literature has been taught and the trap that involves authors moving ideas and attitudes through stories. This is an art, but the reader must know how to allocate each thing in its own place. The little I have read from Bukowski has led me to think that his style many times, though not always, brutal and grim conveys ideas of contempt and violence, a conception of reality devoid of humanity, as if reality, people and things, were there to beat them. Acknowledging that Bukowski was a victim of himself, I can understand that the content of his works is the living or clear expression of his own personal situation. This doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be read. I myself have approached at some point his poetry and, although it is not the style and content that I like the most, it can be read, as long as it is done as I was saying, with distance, with a good mind awake so as not to fall into the claws of so many affirmations – denial is a form or modality of affirmation- as conclusive and the repetition of ideas such as that of death or others such as prostitution or the reification of human life. Gil de Biedma, like other poets and writers, wrote almost always under the influence of alcohol and it is perceived in his poetry that in his pen there is something that moves it and that is beyond soberness.
Books that are read must behave like friends. I know that a book lacks a life of its own, that it does not have a heart or a sensibility that speaks directly to us, but that it is the readers who perceive its heart and its sensitivity, which is not always the same for all. It is not the book that looks us in the eye or caresses us, it is us who project on it and from it its content on ourselves; it is us who feel and interpret its content, often far removed from the intentions of the author himself. Hence I infer that books and authors, like individuals, should be the subject of choice on the part of the reader, who has in his hand the final decision. I don’t think Kafka is an author to read in times of psychological weakness; however, he is a fundamental writer, who must be read under the appropriate psychological conditions of the reader and, as I said in the previous paragraph, with the necessary distance to fit into the soul of his work. A work like Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel 1998) cannot be read without a solid formation on philosophy because that work will behave upon the reader as an enemy if we lack it; it will be like an immensely tall and abrupt mountain range, impossible to encompass. Books and authors have their time, so their choice is critical. It is difficult to know in advance whether what we have chosen is the right thing, if it will bring us something positive, like friends, but we will know it right away, the moment we come into contact with the work. Therefore, with books we have to act like with people, we must discriminate them according to the friendliness they awaken in us. If Bukowski is not a good company at a time, his reading is discarded, and absolutely nothing happens. There are moments to read Ovid’s Tristia ex Ponto (Wheeler and others 1924) and others to read the Epigrams of Marco Valero Marcial. Reading should serve to lift our spirits, not to be angry, oppressed, or depressed.
Depression is a terrible disease. I’m not going to show you anything, but it’s you who could speak out broadly and with a sense of this disease. But it is a disease that places us on the edge of nothingness, nullifies us and enslaves us in the dark, preventing us from being ourselves, even though, when we go through depression, we think that we are authentically ourselves. It is us in our full selfhood when we are in full mastery of ourselves, when our qualities or abilities (I do not like the term competences) shine, are in full force, and during a depression, these are darkened, as covered by a great veil that suffocates them. It is a state from which one does not always come out by oneself, but with help, although one does not come out of it without putting effort, tenacity, and willpower. I don’t know how you feel; nobody knows it better than you and no one better than you to determine if you need help or if you have enough strength to get out of that state on your own. The permanent idea of death is worrying. I confess that I have written many poems about death, but it does not affect me to write about it or read verses or texts that speak of it. It is there and appears when nature wants, but I am very clear that speaking in human terms, death is the failure of life, especially when it does not arrive naturally.
On Friday, they pay tribute to my lifelong friend, to a person with whom I have lived around the clock from the age of twelve to twenty-five and with whom I have shared even money. I have enjoyed his successes and have often been a shoulder to cry on for him - and he for me, of course. He died of a fulminant cancer last July 25. He was Professor of Public International Law and International Relations at the University of Zaragoza. Above all, he was my friend and a person committed to democracy and human rights since his (our) youth. Society has lost a great mind and above all a great person. I have mourned him more than anyone in this life and I do not forgive the nature who has taken him, but I have to accept his definitive absence. As you can understand, I’ll be in that homage, and I’ve had to accept reality. I only understand death as a moment of life, produced by nature itself. The rest, as the Stoics tell about death, has always seemed to me to be a failure not only of life itself but of the person. Adverse situations should be dealt with effort and help, if necessary. That’s what friends and, if they’re required, professionals are for. The loss of a loved one stirs our guts and makes us rethink the meaning of life. It does not occur to me that reading something, however intense, will affect us so much that we enter a personal crisis. It can make us think again, meditate so that we can specify our conception of life or things, but one must always be above what is read. Autonomy and self-control are fundamental conditions of freedom. You know that the highest suicide rate is that of the Nordic countries, geographical areas where the climate is very adverse, with hardly any solar radiation. You may also be falling victim, not only of the environment and readings but of Belgium’s own climate, which has very little to do with Valladolid’s, at least in terms of solar radiation.
Alcohol and drugs alienate us, deprive us of our own abilities, weakening our autonomy and self-control. I do not understand the environments of binge drinking, which are environments created and supported by interests foreign to the people. No one frees himself from problems by alienating himself, but on the contrary, he enslaves oneself to something as alien as an addictive substance that ends up being our owner. There are too many economic and ideological interests behind the culture of drugs and, in particular, alcohol and, why not, rock culture and its derivatives, which are associated with it, but this is not the time to analyze this, an analysis, which, as it cannot be otherwise, the rockers do not share. I confess that I have never been able to drink more than two wines, that I have never come close to drunkenness, precisely because, like everyone else, I have seen drunk people since I was a child and I have always rejected that state. The first drunk I met was a gentleman who got into our class, at school, when I was a kid when I was five or six. The teacher, a great teacher, by the way, treated him gently and got him out; but that show shocked me so much that I have never been able to understand or comprehend the culture of alcohol or drugs. I think I understood what that meant. Moreover, university students and young people, in general, do not conceive of the week without alcohol only indicates the lack of personal maturity of those who practice it. We do not need to be high to socialize, but rather authentic human relationships are born and grown from authenticity, whose foundations are in sincerity, loyalty, commitment and, among other things, self-control and autonomy. The rest, the nonsense that Tierno Galván could say in his day and others now about fun and its relationship with alcohol, only lead to the self-destruction and destruction of society. I will seem radical to you, but the social, cultural, political, personal… consequences of drug culture are devastating in all aspects, and alcohol is a hugely potent and destructive drug.
Poetry is but a literary genre, although some discuss it. Whether you look at it, it is offered and used as an instrument of expression that can reach artistic heights. It is not only form and beauty, as some - to some extent F. - argue. When we use the word, we express content, with greater or lesser fortune and, if there is no content, there is no literature, there is nothing that can be valuable. Any poem impacts our sensitivity even before our understanding. Besides, we usually stop reading that poem whose reading doesn’t move us. Poetry is, therefore, a very powerful weapon, like everything that directs towards our sensitivity, like advertising, for example. Next to and below the emotion and the feeling of beauty that provokes any poem translates ideas, those that impact us and, as I said before regarding readings, must be sifted by our own reflection. In any case, poetry should be read like any other literary genre, with a certain distance from the read content. This does not mean that we read impassively, but strategically that procedural estrangement allows us to understand, to know better, to feel more intensely when we read, but with the difference that we keep intact our ability to analysis, our autonomy over the other. And I think this very thing has to be done in ordinary life. We’re not going to a class to get emotional, but to focus our attention on the content of the teacher’s speech. The act of focusing attention means nothing more than to concentrate our capabilities - in its entirety - to be able to understand how much we hear and, to do so, we constantly discriminate against the content and distinguish the fundamentals of the incidental and capture the relationships between the different content that we consider as valuable. If we were emotionally involved in the content of the teacher’s speech, we would very hardly understand the content of it and surely never get to pass the subject and finish the studies. The poet Bukowski, like F. or any other poet, must be read to enjoy and never to suffer. The Bukowski of Hug the Darkness, of Bluebird, or of True, for example, must be read from a distance. In any case, if a poem or a poet does not excite us and that emotion is not accompanied by positive contributions - ethical, aesthetic, ideological, etc. – its reading is cut off and we pass on to something else. Maybe at another moment, we’ll find out in it what we don’t see now. But if this is not the moment, we must not insist. With reading we have to enjoy, never suffer or endure. There are poets whose readings always seem new. The classics, the immortals. To give some examples of Spanish literature: Lorca, Machado, Miguel Hernández, Gamoneda, Gonzalo Rojas or Juan Gelman. Even though they are classic, our spirit - if it is worth the word - not always tastes its texts. They are there, they are offered to us and we are the ones who choose and taste them. They are a delicacy, but it is the diner who enjoys them.
It is very typical of confusing personal moments and times of social crisis when one is tempted to see on the horizon and on his back a destiny that leads us to an irremediable horizon and end. Those of us who were born in the middle of dictatorship and saw the dictator live and rule so calmly, who perceived that Spanish society was suppressed and, worse, was submissive to the dictator’s own empire were tempted to think that our own destiny was written, that there was no other opportunity than surviving as it were, because we could do nothing to straighten that twisted tusk of the dictatorship and the fate of Spain and, with it, ours and that of each of us. However, many were involved in the struggle for democracy, such as my friend A., whom I have quoted you before. Passivity leaves all possible means in the hands of the power and we are left with the citizens who are defenseless and subdued. It is true that in our society mediocrity abounds even in the positions of greatest responsibility, but this is what we have so far. The horizon is clear, and mediocrity, indifference, inaction, and even violence are gradually overcome, unfortunately never completely, but our obligation as individuals and citizens is to give our best. It is the sowing that we can and must do, it is the power that we hold in our hands and it is also our own responsibility. Turning a blind eye and taking refuge in supposedly saving selfishness leads to inaction and immobility. By this path, there would never have been a Thales of Miletus or a Ramon y Cajal, a Darwinist theory of evolution or the knowledge about the genetic code. There is the example of inaction in the field of knowledge that occurred during the Middle Ages. Involving oneself implies commitment and generosity, but without them, together with other values, such as the impulse for the search for truth, the love of justice, the respect or the dialogue, for example, nothing improves, neither society, nor companies, nor States, nor human beings.
Mass parties and great mass events anesthetize; the media anesthetize with their TV shows about frivolities; the monopoly of football, so many vacuous contests, so much banal literature, etc., etc. It’s easy to complain and stay in the lament, selling the image of lament as if something was built with it. We must analyze, but the analysis, which never implies complaint or regret alone, should lead to action: to educate ourselves as best and as much as possible, to work, to research, to publish, in a nutshell, to offer society the best of ourselves; it is the way to find ourselves and create spaces of personal fulfillment that bring us happiness. We may feel rejection or aversion to injustice or lack of freedoms, for example. The rejection of something implies a choice, positioning in the face of reality and taking a stance before it, which is already an active attitude. Hate destroys coexistence, paralyzes us and places us in the anteroom of violence, with which only destroys and never builds something worthwhile.
There’s one aspect that has really worried me not only in your letter but in my own life. I mean the role of the intellectual and, before all, that of the citizen. Although to some extent I have already answered, I would like to add a brief reflection on this particular issue. The problem is whether the intellectual can and should even settle for doing his work in a professional manner or whether to demand from both the intellectual and any citizen something else, a greater commitment to society. The image of Plato’s cavern you quote in your letter is very clairvoyant. The wisest is not the one who leaves the cavern, since he always comes out with the help of other people, the pedagogue, in the case of platonic myth; the wisest, the one who, in Aristotle’s words, leads avirtuous life, is the one who, in addition to leaving the cavern and walking the way to the contemplation of the sun, the truth, that is, performs the ascending dialectical process, returns to the cavern in order to help other prisoners out of it -descending dialectics-. There Plato – and the common sense – tells us clearly what the role of the intellectual, the philosopher, and, by extension, the true citizen is. The posture of those who believe that they have left the cavern and stand there, still, satisfied outside of the cavern forgetting its origins, enjoying and reserving for themselves the sweetness of knowledge and art, only deserves reproaches. They are a clear manifestation of the social and personal selfishness that has always occurred and that populates our time. They are antisocial beings because they only want for themselves what belongs to everyone, regardless of their social origin. Here is the foundation of the validity of universal education, of public education, which guarantees access to training to all without distinction. Returning to the cavern is an act of responsibility, a due act, forced from the point of view of moral conscience. Staying out means living in overt irresponsibility. If I am honest with you, here is the rational and moral unifying thread that directed me to teach, instead of focusing on engineering, as my teachers wanted. Do not take me as a hero, because I am not, I do not intend to present myself as an example of anything; after all, I’ve done what I wanted and I liked, nonetheless, having to overcome very difficult obstacles, but I haven’t been the only one in this either. Doing what you like and want contributes to your happiness and thus benefits and enriches society. In short, we would all like to do in life what we like, and I think we should aspire to achieve it. Returning to Plato and those who do not have solidarity and social commitment in their minds, it can be said that they renounce a part or aspect of life that contributes to their own happiness and deprive society of a good that belongs to it.
Figure 12: Somewhere in Belgium. October, 2013: Narcisus drowning in the train window.
Following the course of your letter, you end up with a self-incrimination meditation. I don’t know if you have to accuse yourself of things. It is one thing to analyze, to stop in the way, to look in the mirror and to draw conclusions that lead to decisions that seem appropriate, another to blame for defects or faults and, worse, that this prosecution process paralyzes us and leads us to a sick situation or even sickness. The first thing must be done from time to time, as any aircraft or boat pilot does, which corrects the course at short intervals, after having done the necessary checks and calculations; self-incrimination is something else, especially when it is easy that certain circumstances outside oneself have been determinants of the personal situation: friends who do not help, personal loneliness, remoteness of family and loved ones, the weather, new companions, language, et cetera. As it happens to all of us, you may be doing something wrong, but this is no reason to fall into a depression, let alone for self-destructive thoughts or feelings to appear. You’re finishing the degree you chose in your day because it was the one you liked, you’ve done your studies brilliantly, you have a supportive family and loyal friends to trust. You have the circumstances in your favor. I think you have a favorable career and personal circumstances for you to finish your studies in Belgium as you have done so far, taking advantage of the opportunity to study abroad, which is still a real opportunity to acquire a more open academic and personal education with broad horizons. It is you who know better than anyone the trap you have built or fallen into. Surely it consists in the aim of encompassing too many areas, widening the circle of interests and obligations beyond the degree you are studying. It is good - and necessary - that you focus on the contents of the degree you are finishing. Psychology is an area of complex knowledge with a future, which deserves full dedication. The fact that you relate and befriend people who quite surpass you in age may have led you to try to live up to their dedication to other areas of knowledge. We would all like to know everything and, moreover, to the maximum degree, but this is not possible. To grow as a person and be a good professional, we have to narrow the area of interests and especially the area to which we are dedicated. As if we were proceeding in circles, the greatest dedication must be in what we have chosen as the scope of priority knowledge; from there, other concentric circles that refer to areas of knowledge compatible with the first and complementary to each other; but key dedication must focus on the priority. The trajectory or the fruits of others’ activity should not be magnified. We tend to think that what those close to us, who are moving away from our area of dedication, do is so interesting that we see ourselves in the need to emulate them. Maybe that’s where we set ourselves a trap. What others do, painters, musicians, poets or scientists, whatever the branch of science, may be wonderful, but we must understand that this area of knowledge is what they chose in their day and that, precisely because they made it their priority dedication, they excel in it and make contributions to society. But how many of them do not look at others with eyes of admiration; if they were sincere, they would all reveal to us how much they admire people with dedications to an area of knowledge far removed from their own. The limitation of our time and capabilities, coupled with the increasing complexity of knowledge, means that we have to be realistic and delimit the area of knowledge in which we want to be competent and, if possible, with the maximum degree of excellence. It is from there that we gradually build the elements necessary to be happy and contribute as much as possible to the well-being of society. The rest, that we age, for example, is part of the inevitable vital process, and in which we should not think, because it is useless or worthless.
There is a thought that I have had clear since I was a child, that the future is built by us. Time, following Kant, does not exist outside of ourselves, but rather is a universally necessary condition that we impose on people, the subject, on things. In this sense, although we find it strange, we own our time, which makes us owners and responsible for our lives. We are what we leave and that heritage that we leave we build it little by little, from the moment we have personal autonomy until our body ceases to have a chance of survival. Knowledge and affections, how much we build throughout life mean that sowing that we leave there as a constituent part of our own being; it is what we leave, spread among others, and that identifies us or allows us to remain beyond the limitation of the duration of our lives. This permanence does not have to always be publicly recognized, that is, by society as a whole; we stay, we remain in feelings and therefore in the memory of the nearest and sometimes even our identity is recognized beyond that limit. It doesn’t matter the apparent extent of our heritage. There we left as much as we could or was in our power to leave as an inheritance. This improves life and society.
The tensions to which we subject ourselves, increased by the pressures and uncertainty created by society in general and the unique moment in which we live – which, on the other hand, will always be unique – place us in scenarios that are not always easy and, often difficult. Although it may seem like a utopia, good therapy is to try not to enter into the competitive game or trap that the propaganda sets us. More than just being competitive, we must be as competent as possible in that area of knowledge where we have specialized; competitiveness, that is, the place we occupy in society must be the result of our own competence, the degree of knowledge that we have reached and of what we are able to offer ourselves and others. Entering the game of competitiveness as a goal and strategy leads to stress, anguish and, ultimately, depression and, with all, to be less ourselves and even to be set apart. A conception of life as a struggle or war may seem very beautiful, as Heráclito and all economic liberalism said, but this conception is only useful to those who hold power and have it, that is, it is – or believes it is - safe from the swings of the all-out war of competitiveness. When those in power fall, they ask for help and demand the solidarity of others. It is a war that lowers us to the level of the animal that we are, of the mammal we are, that has to mark the territory and fight to conquer and maintain it. This new conception of reality – which, on the other hand, is not so new and which is, for example, in the Gospel – must be elaborated and worked, not fight, but worked to sow and flourish. A life focused on personal fulfillment, complementarity, sociability, empathy, respect, sense of duty, etc., that leads people to achieve the highest possible degree of happiness.
I think I’ve elaborated on a lot and I’m not sure I’ve written anything that you may find valuable or, at the very least, useful. I, therefore, offer you my reflections made in the thread of some of your reflections, which have seemed to me significant, among those you address or suggest in your letter. I know I’ve been on my toes about the problems you’re raising, but I don’t know if this is the right time to take each of them one by one and extend myself thoroughly. I am satisfied if my meditations help you return to yourself and, now, calmly, slowly and looking for objectivity, you will reorient your state or situation.
A hug.
T..
(Valladolid, 13 November 2013)
References
Bertrand, Russell. 1930. “The Conquest of Happiness.” London, George Allen & Un Win.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1998. Phenomenology of Spirit. Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
Wheeler, Arthur Leslie, and others. 1924. Ovid with an English Translation: Tristia, Ex Ponto. W. Heinemann.