René Christian Moya's Open Salon Blog

Greece’s Second Chance

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:05:37 -0400

[Originally posted at my Wordpress blog]

The results of the Greek election on 6 May 2012 proved more confusing than most observers expected. The two previously dominant, centrist, pro-European parties—New Democrats (ND) and PASOK—received a slightly smaller share of the vote (32%) than pre-election polls suggested, confirming their post-2009 collapse (when ND and PASOK gained 77.4% of the vote.)

What should a foreign observer make of an exceptionally messy result? Two broad trends can be discerned:

The Electorate Is Severely Divided

Voters abandoned PASOK and ND en masse—but did not settle on a single alternative voice. Perhaps the most illustrative figure here is the 13.2% of the vote that did not go to the top 9 parties. (The comparable figure for 2009 was ~1.2%.) Such is the fragmentation of the electoral that almost 1 out of 7 votes went to parties which never stood a chance of forming a government. As mentioned above, less than a third of voters stuck with the ND/PASOK duopoly, effectively ending centrist politics as we know it—whilst opening a path for hard-line ideological parties.

The big winners were SYRIZA ( the Coalition of the Radical Left), Independent Greeks (an ND splinter group) and Chrysi Avgi/Golden Dawn. SYRIZA mostly benefited from defections from PASOK and the Democratic Left in the run-up to the election, while the Communist vote increased marginally. SYRIZA’s showing should not be too surprising: It is anti-austerity, pro-euro, and unquestionably leftist. The latter point is important—a majority of MPs in the current parliament represent parties of the left, broadly defined, in a country with a long history of radical left politics.

On the other side of the divide, Golden Dawn’s entry into parliament represents the rise of the reactionary right: racist, xenophobic, anti-democratic. Seeking to capitalise on depression-fatigue, Golden Dawn’s platform rests largely on blaming (and threatening) minorities of an ethnic, social or sexual nature. This too is, sadly, not shocking. It is nevertheless the clearest sign yet that Greek society is nearing the breaking point.

Yes to the euro, No to Austerity

This should go without saying—as an electoral choice, austerity has been decisively rejected by an overwhelming proportion of the Greek electorate. 6 out of 10 of MPs in the new parliament represent parties rejecting the Memorandum: the austerity programme set as a condition for European Union/IMF financing. The four main ‘pro-memorandum’ parties—New Democrats, PASOK, and two liberal parties, DRASI and DISY—received less than 37% of the vote.

Nevertheless, the vast majority of Greeks want to keep the euro as their currency—70% according to one poll. Are these two positions irreconcilable? Not necessarily. Contrary to the public statements of officials across the continent, Greece cannot be kicked out of the Eurozone through any legal mechanism. This does not preclude the Eurozone’s 16 other members trying their best to throw Greece out. Yet, forced between having to exit the European Union entirely—the only explicit legal channel for a Greek pull-out—and staying de jure in the euro-club, it is possible to imagine a situation where Greece is both illiquid and (nominally) a Eurozone member.

A Second Chance?

The Greek president has called a new election for 17 June after failed attempts by ND, SYRIZA and PASOK (each in turn) to form a government. The Greek results have focused minds at the European and global levels, with prominent European voices now openly speculating about Greece’s withdrawal from monetary union. Greece’s creditors—the European Union, the IMF and what remains of private sector bondholders—surely hope that the June election will return a parliamentary (if not ballot-box) majority favourable to the current austerity-bailout programme. The Greek people, in turn, must decide whether they risk giving SYRIZA a mandate to renege on the current programme—a decision the EU might in due course reject.

It is nevertheless clear that SYRIZA will be a force to reckon with after the June election. Every poll since 6 May has given them at least 20% of the vote, leading or slightly trailing ND as the first-party. It is very likely we’ll see SYRIZA commanding more than 120 seats in the next parliament on current projections—putting them on the path to forming an anti-austerity front. I am cautiously optimistic about a decline in Golden Dawn’s turnout next-time around, as most polls project a fall in their vote since the May election.

Greece’s Choice

How will the Greek crisis end? That is a topic deserving its own post. If ND eke out a win with enough seats to form a coalition with PASOK, then Greece will continue with its current programme of labour-market ‘reforms’ coupled with severe austerity, at least until Greece musters a primary budget surplus. (After which even ND might consider defaulting on all of its external debt, the consequences be damned.)

But if SYRIZA cobble together a broad anti-austerity front, all bets are off. Either the EU and IMF decide their previous strategy has failed, or they dig-in and demand Greek acquiescence. In the event, it is likely the markets would pre-empt both sides: expect an accelerated bank run, a sudden credit stop throughout the economy, and the collapse of Greek banks. Greece would then have to make its fatal choice between doing everything it can to keep the euro, or risk introducing its own currency under the severest of conditions. In short, Greece would be forced from one disastrous outcome to another—with millions of ordinary people suffering the consequences.

Greece’s creditors have, and have had the choice to lessen the country’s burden without a wholesale rejection of current policy (though I strongly advocate the latter.) In a less stupid world, the European Central Bank would backstop European sovereigns as much (if not more than) it already backstops private-sector (read: democratically unaccountable) banks. In a less stupid world, Germany would lead a domestic demand-led dash for growth in the Eurozone core, spurring peripheral exports through more public-sector spending, higher German wages, and a medium-term higher-than-desired inflation rate. In a less stupid world, core Europe would recycle the fruits of its competitive advantage (and excess savings) back into peripheral Europe through a new Marshall Plan.

In a much less stupid world, countries would break—once and for all—the vice of high finance, subjugating financial markets to the full power of the state, if not directly through public ownership, then indirectly through a liberated fiscal policy, doing away with the antiquated notion that countries remain solvent at the behest of international capital. In an age of electronic money and free-floating currencies, the gold standard mentality continues to dominate public discourse, with disastrous consequences.

Even now, at a minute to midnight, nothing is inevitable; the worst outcome need not be Europe’s fate. The economy remains the realm of human choice and determination. It is a purely human construct, one which men and women have it in their power to shape—for good or ill. ‘There is no alternative’—the fatalist assumption of two generations of leaders—is the beguiling mantra of the feckless and stupid, or sadistic politician. It is an abdication of responsibility at best, a conscious imposition of conspicuous immorality at worst.

Europe’s politicians must face up to the havoc they have caused: four years of recession, resulting in a loss of one-quarter of Greece’s output and a historic 21.7% unemployment rate, to say nothing of the secondary effects caused elsewhere. It is time to say enough is enough to failed policies and wasted lives.

May 6: A Greek Reckoning?

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:04:08 -0400

[Originally posted at my Wordpress blog]

Greece is to hold elections 6 May 2012, for the first time since the start of the Greek crisis—and in the midst of the most destructive austerity ever imposed on the Greek people. The ‘markets’ are apparently ‘unhappy’, since the result—a win by the ‘wrong’ party, or even a hung parliament—might put the recent Eurozone ‘bailout’ (read: punishment) and partial-default deal in danger.

From the streets of Athens, the answer surely is: They can get stuffed.

Democracy shouldn’t be the prerogative of international finance.But if in fact it is—if in fact, bankers and their fellow travellers in Frankfurt, London and Zürich call the shots as many suspect—then the continuing Greek farce demonstrates that ‘liberal democracy’ is not real democracy at all. Is Greece simply, finally proving that ‘liberal democracy’—conceptually, philosophically, practically—is simply oligarchy made pretty?

***

Where stands the Greek electorate? Divided, angry and confused.

At the last election in 2009, a few weeks before the Greek crisis erupted, PASOK (a vaguely centre-left, bourgeois, New Labour-like party) and the New Democrats (conservatives) held sway over 77.4% of the vote between them. Today, the combined vote of the two largest Greek parties stands at 33.5%. The old certainties are being swept away, as the two parties directly responsible for Greece’s present state are deserted en masse.

As a socialist, I’m slightly comforted by the relative strength of the left. Parties of the left and far-left—the Coalition of the Radical Left, Democratic Left, and the Communists—have a powerful 36% of the vote between them, without including PASOK and the smaller Ecologist Greens. Nevertheless, there are some ominous developments, with the rise of a new nationalist-conservative party (the Independent Greeks) and a stable 5% for the neo-fascist Chrysi Avgi party.

This is the end of the old, staid, stable and moderate politics of post-dictatorship Greece. What follows next will depend greatly on the results of this election. The New Democrats have already threatened to force a new election if they can’t form a government, which would plunge the country into further crisis—and perhaps even a full default.

Boiling under the surface, however, are possibilities still worse–and all too real.

***

Poll by The Public Issue for Skai TV and Kathimerini. (Link)

New Democrats (Conservative) 19.0%

PASOK (Centre-Left) 14.5%

Coalition of the Radical Left (Left) 13.0%

Democratic Left (Left) 12.0%

Communist Party [KKE] (Left) 11.0%

Independent Greeks (Nationalist) 11.0%

Chrysi Avgi (Neo-fascist) 5.0%

Popular Orthodox Rally (Conservative) 3.0%

Ecologist Greens (Left) 3.0%

‘Naturally, we were all there…’

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:01:00 -0500

[Originally posted at my Wordpress blog]

It was enough for her to say, at a certain moment: “Oh, if I only had some room, how I’d like to make some tagliatelle for you boys!” And in that moment we all thought of the space that her round arms would occupy, moving backward and forward with the rolling pin over the dough, her bosom leaning over the great mound of flour and eggs which cluttered the wide board while her arms kneaded and kneaded, white and shiny with oil up to the elbows; we thought of the space that the flour would occupy, and the wheat for the flour, and the fields to raise the wheat, and the mountains from which the water would flow to irrigate the fields, and the grazing lands for the herds of calves that would give their meat for the sauce; of the space it would take for the Sun to arrive with its rays, to ripen the wheat; of the space for the Sun to condense from the clouds of stellar gases and burn; of the quantities of stars and galaxies and galactic masses in flight through space which would be needed to hold suspended every galaxy, every nebula, every sun, every planet, and at the same time we thought of it, this space was inevitably being formed, at the same time that Mrs. Ph(i)Nk_0 was uttering those words: “… ah, what tagliatelle, boys!” the point that contained her and all of us was expanding in a halo of distance in light-years and light-centuries and billions of light-millennia, and we were being hurled to the four corners of the universe (Mr. Pber^t Pber^d all the way to Pavia), and she, dissolved into I don’t know what kind of energy-light-heat, she, Mrs. Ph(i)Nk_0, she who in the midst of our closed, petty world had been capable of a generous impulse, “Boys, the tagliatelle I would make for you!,” a true outburst of general love, initiating at the same moment the concept of space and, properly speaking, space itself, and time, and universal gravitation, and the gravitating universe, making possible billions and billions of suns, and of planets, and fields of wheat, and Mrs. Ph(i)Nk_0, scattered through the continents of the planets, kneading with floury, oil-shiny, generous arms, and she lost at that very moment, and we, mourning her loss.

– Italo Calvino, ‘All at One Point’, Cosmicomics [Le cosmicomiche] (1965)

‘I am NOT SOCIALIST’: Obama, ‘Liberals’ and Socialism

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:01:54 -0500

[Originally posted at my Wordpress blog]

What makes a socialist a socialist in the 21st century? I owe it to myself one day to provide an answer to that question. As Owen Jones has argued over at his blog:

There are issues that the left must be at the forefront of championing: like equality for women and gays, or opposing war, for example. But these issues by themselves do not define us as ‘left-wing’, even if we have a left-wing take on them. A good liberal will support gay rights, and a maverick Tory like Simon Jenkins can oppose wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the fight for working-class representation and emancipation that makes us ‘the left’.

I agree with the general thrust of that argument. I think defining oneself as a wo/man of the left is next-to-useless, or at least incomplete, without an element of class consciousness–without at least a minimally empathic response to the severe dislocations caused by modern capitalism. (What socialism’s response to capitalism’s discontents should be, I leave for another day.) And Owen is equally right in pointing out that a social liberal (and here I take the classical meaning of the term) of any political stripe can equally support causes close to the left’s heart–you can believe that gays should be allowed to live their lives in peace, whilst supporting regressive economic policies.

So if asked to sketch an idealised lefty, I suppose I’d settle for a women’s/queer rights-championing Martin Luther King Jr.-cum-Clement Attlee. Cumbersome, perhaps, yet evocative.

***

I stumbled upon this image on Facebook today, proudly shared by friends who–perhaps–I’d call fellow travellers on a good day. The image proudly defends the president from what it considers obviously defamatory labels, and is meant to stir the spirits of the Democratic Party’s base. I, unfortunately, find little to be impressed by–whether in the image above or in the president’s record. Sure, Barack Obama’s personal story remains as inspiring as ever, but a president cannot stand on his background alone. And indeed, his record is pretty patchy. His administration’s under-powered fiscal stimulus; its unwillingness to admit that the stimulus didn’t pass muster; its refusal to contemplate a follow-up despite mass unemployment; its capitulation to lobbies on healthcare reform, refusing even to consider a single-payer system; its continuation, and indeed expansion, of dubious policies vis-à-vis terrorism; and more–all of these are reasons for a healthy dose of scepticism, at minimum, from anyone remotely sympathetic to the left. In many ways, none of this is surprising–Obama was, and remains a president of the establishment, seeking from the beginning of his political career not to rock the boat too much for corporate interests.

So far, so predictable.

The real trouble comes in explaining just why and how America’s ‘liberals’ continue to believe the president deserves the leeway many have given him. And a large part of this leeway is explained in the shockingly staid conventions of US political thought–in America’s ceaseless conformism, especially in the political realm. Take that poster: It goes out of its way not to label its man a ‘socialist’ or a ‘radical’. The trouble, of course, is that for many of us (36% of all Americans, a majority of Democrats, and an even healthier majority of ‘liberals’) view ‘socialism’ positively. But the Obamanauts seem to live on a planet where they assume socialism is, by definition, a very dirty word–even within their base. That the majority of Americans view socialism negatively is neither here nor there–I expect that the majority of those critical of the concept probably have some pretty warped views of socialism. The point is that within his base–and this image is clearly aimed at young, already-converted supporters of the president–a healthy number probably wouldn’t mind giving ‘socialist’ proposals a fair hearing.

In failing even to acknowledge this reserve army of the left, the American progressive movement as currently constituted will never achieve the sort of success America needs–to rebuild its economy on fairer grounds, to restore a sense of dignity to the deprived and middle classes, and to build a stronger and more cohesive union. This perennial fear of even contemplating ‘socialist’ (read: public-sector-led) solutions to the many ills that trouble us will continue to handicap the greatest agent for progressive change available to the country–that is, the authority of the central state to provide solutions, on everything from infrastructural development, to better education, to universal healthcare, to greater income equality. Insofar as mainstream American politicians largely refrain from making the case–yes, for socialism, and yes, even on unabashedly ideological grounds–Americans will only mildly take-up the half-baked, tepid solutions the mainstream offers as a pale consolation.

And it is precisely this lack of radicalism–which Obama’s supporters, the president and his administration wear as a badge of honour, on display in the image above–which makes the Democratic Party perhaps the most unappealing major party of the left in the Western world. It might have the best intentions, but the Democratic Party today is largely a vacuous ‘progressive’ party (a watered-down term explicitly avoiding the Marxist baggage)–fitfully propelled forward by platitudes, though usually bogged down by our cumbersome, and archaic constitutional order. (How’s that for a radical statement?) How so-called American ‘progressives’ think anything short of a ‘radical’ programme for renewal–similar to a codified version of Franklin Roosevelt’s second bill of rights, coupled with a robust economic framework–will do, is beyond me. (And how America’s youth today can’t yet manage to respond to their viscerally straitened horizons, relative to earlier post-war generations, with anything near the baby-boomer’s confrontational confidence is even more confusing.)

So permit me while I refrain from being inspired by our not-socialist, not-radical president. If only he dared be a bit of both.

***

Historical Post-Script

In 1999, the Democratic Leadership Council hosted the leaders of the centre-left parties then in power in every major Western power–including the United States (Bill Clinton), Germany (Gerhard Schröder), France (the co-habitation government of Lionel Jospin), Britain (Tony Blair) and Italy (Massimo D’Alema). The context matters: this was the heyday of the long 1990s boom; this was the triumphalist post-Cold War era, the ‘end of history’, during which the victory of Western liberal democracy became entrenched. And whatever their nominal ‘leftism’, these leaders were mostly post-left–these were leaders of the ‘Third Way’, reconciling capitalism with ‘social solidarity’. It fell to Italy’s Massimo D’Alema to remind the assembled leaders that the European centre-left, at least, owed its traditions to socialism. Admitting that the five leaders shared a reformist agenda, D’Alema nonetheless suggested they also shared a ‘big problem’:

There are words that in your civilization, in your history, sound difficult to understand or to accept…For example, we belong to the Socialist International, and I’m aware that this word is somewhat sensitive here…[at this moment, the crowd cracked up in laughter]…and I can see that we have avoided pronouncing this word here. But we should prevail over this fear of words.

D’Alema was decidedly right–and his words have greater potency now, as capitalism suffers its greatest crisis since the 1930s. Yet, Bill Clinton’s jarring response then is as equally incisive as D’Alema’s comments: ‘I’m not sure I would have you here, Massimo, if I were running for reelection.’ Barack Obama would hardly disagree.

Post-Post Script (1:40 AM)

I was reminded of two articles I’d read in the last year in the London Review of Books, with some appropriate passages for what I’ve written above.

On Obama, the ‘establishment president’: ‘Obama is choosing to leave behind the popular base of the Democratic Party and build an ecumenical consensus which starts in his head. The process seems to be intuitive, and to explain it one can only fall back on psychology. Obama sees himself as the establishment president. If a populist insurgency on the right presses hard against his legitimacy, if disappointed supporters stop giving money or knocking on doors, still he has the confidence of a leader whose standing is buoyed up by corporate leaders, by a famous general and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, by a decent preponderance of Wall Street, and by the mainstream media, whose resources he deploys and channels with a relentlessness no other president has approached.’ [LRB, Vol. 32 No. 9 · 13 May 2010, pp 39-40]

On the natural sympathies of socialists: ‘The fundamental perception of British socialism, and Scottish socialism especially, is about wasted lives, the strangled destinies of ordinary people. Last summer, I went to Jimmy Reid’s funeral in Govan. Billy Connolly, once an apprentice in the same shipyard, told a story about going for walks with Reid in Glasgow. “He’d point to a tower block and say: ‘Behind that window is a guy who could win Formula One. And behind that one there’s a winner of the round-the-world yacht race. And behind the next one … And none of them will ever get the chance to sit at the wheel of a racing car or in the cockpit of a yacht.’”‘ [LRB, Vol. 33 No. 11 · 2 June 2011, pp 8-9]

No Judgements, Only Prayers

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:01:06 -0500

[Originally posted at my Wordpress blog]

Sin necesidad de dramatizar, la más modesta objetividad era una apertura en absurdo de París, de la vida gregaria. Puesto que había pensado en los poetas era fácil acordarse de todos los que habían denunciado la soledad del hombre junto al hombre, la irrisoria comedia de los saludos, el “perdón” al cruzarse en la escalera, el asiento que se cede a las señoras en el metro, la confraternidad en la política y los deportes. Sólo un optimismo biológico y sexual podían disimularse a algunos su insularidad, mal que le pesara a John Donne. Los contactos en la acción y la raza y el oficio y la cama y la cancha, eran contactos de ramas y hojas que se entrecruzan y acarician de árbol a árbol, mientras los troncos alzan desdeñosos sus paralelas inconciliables. “En el fondo podríamos ser como en la superficie” pensó Oliveira, “pero habría que vivir de otra manera. ¿Y qué quiere decir vivir de otra manera? Quizá vivir absurdamente para acabar con el absurdo, tirarse en sí mismo con una tal violencia que el salto acabara en los brazos de otro. Sí, quizá el amor, pero la otherness no dura lo que dura una mujer, y además solamente en lo que toca a esa mujer. En el fondo no hay otherness, apenas la agradable togetherness. Cierto que ya es algo”… Amor, ceremonia ontologizante, dadora de ser. Y por eso se le ocurría ahora lo que a lo mejor debería habérsele ocurrido al principio: sin poseerse no había posesión de la otredad, ¿y quién se poseía de veras? ¿Quién estaba de vuelta en sí mismo, de la soledad absoluta que representa no contar siquiera con la compañía propia, tener que meterse en el cine o en el prostíbulo o en la casa de los amigos o en una profesión absorbente o en el matrimonio para estar por lo menos solo-entre-los-demás? Así, paradójicamente, el colmo de soledad conducía al colmo de gregarismo, a la gran ilusión de la compañía ajena, al hombre solo en la sala de los espejos y los ecos. Pero gentes como él y tantos otros, que se aceptaban a sí mismos (o que se rechazaban pero conociéndose de cerca) entraban en la peor paradoja, la de estar quizá al borde de la otredad y no poder franquearlo. La verdadera otredad hecha de delicados contactos, de maravillosos ajustes con el mundo, no podía cumplirse desde un solo término, a la mano tendida debía responder otra mano desde el afuera, desde lo otro.

- Julio Cortázar, Rayuela (Chapter 22)

***

One of the more understandable misconceptions of the study of Philosophy concerns the study of human morality. I’d hazard to guess that the majority of a randomly-selected population sample would have a pretty specific view of moral philosophy as an academic subject—that is to say they’d probably think it largely involves indulging in a prescriptive study of human action. (As an aside, shouldn’t everyone want to be a moral philosopher if this could really change one’s actions for the better?) This is half-right: your average philosophy student will, say, study Epicurean (and non-Epicurean) hedonism, stoicism, utilitarianism and the categorical imperative—all of which to varying degrees have prescriptive consequences—but s/he will do so primarily to analyse and deconstruct the arguments undergirding these respective approaches. I think the layman’s appreciation for ‘eastern’ philosophy (e.g. The Tao Te Ching, The Bhagavad Gita) largely stems from this prescriptive view—these works are, as religious works are wont to be, pretty helpful if one simply wants to inhabit or defend (as oppose to explain) a moral worldview. But an equally important emphasis of Western analytical philosophy concerns itself with the origins of human morals, whether for its individual/microcosmic implications or for its social/macrocosmic merits. Here, the philosopher’s role is more akin to that of an anthropologist—we want to explain how moralities (sic) came to be. This descriptive approach doesn’t exclude the prescriptive one; on the contrary, I think a proper study of morality involves both, with the latter flowing from the former.

This brings me, rather circuitously, to the cheeky title of this post, a pithy motto cherished by my friends and me. ‘No judgements, only prayers’ was our flippant response to critiques (joking or otherwise) of certain aspects of our lives, during those heady college days when the words ‘youthful indiscretions’ were a massive understatement. This motto of sorts was mostly meant as a joke, but there was a clear, reasonable and in fact emotionally satisfying harmony to its meaning. It makes a number of implicit assumptions—that judgement from others is usually cheap, hypocritical, pretentious and unwarranted; that as moral equals, we should therefore try our best to avoid judgement; that there are, nevertheless, good reasons to concern ourselves with the affairs of others (out of love and concern for our friends); and that, consequently, we could at least hope for the best to result from their actions. All of these are debatable assumptions, but they make powerful, intuitive sense to young, rather hedonistic students—and at least to me, they still do, even if I am not so young any more…nor, indeed, so indiscrete.

I would suggest a final assumption, or implicit premise in this view: it presupposes a certain degree of randomness to our individual character. I think we were generally of the view that we would occasionally do things others didn’t expect of or from us, but that all else being equal, this wouldn’t be a problem.

I suppose this moves us to the study of personal identity, and the Janus-like multiplicity of the self. I’ll leave that for another day. For my purposes here, and accepting for argument’s sake what I’ve said above, I’d suggest that that this conjecture has an important conclusion—that we must at all times be prepared to accept that we don’t ever actually, truly know anyone, even those closest to us. There are a host of barriers to total, intimate knowledge. There’s the physical barrier—I am not in someone else’s brain, literally—and the psychological barrier—I cannot peer into someone else’s dreams or nightmares. There are the psycho-emotional barriers—our fears, appetites and desires are our own; and much that could be spoken about and said is often withheld or closeted.

Even when words are forthcoming, they more frequently than not fail us. Language (unassisted) can only take us so far. Take the following passage I wrote one late summer night, four years ago, while at my parent’s home in Los Angeles:

There’s a seductive sense of nostalgia creeping over my sleepiness right now. An almost unnervingly beautiful light-headedness I most always associate with warm nights, an intoxicating feeling you can’t quite emulate or recall wilfully…you sense it, you recognise it—but you don’t quite find explanation for it…a rather queer mix of sensation, emotion and memory…[a heightened awareness of] the warm breeze, the sighing drone of a fan, the sound of the sea, the chirping of crickets, the vague muskiness in the air, the moonlight itself…memories and memories…it’s as if all existence becomes a shade more important, more noteworthy…They are bewitching and bewildering at once… In them I recall the sounds and textures of my past—of the Uruguayan pampa, or the moonlit rivers of New England; of palm-lined streets in México, or of any given evening of my childhood…It’s on these nights most of all that I wish I could stay awake forever… to dream and study and love and ponder—yes, ponder—every night for the rest of my life…

Cheesy much? You betcha. These rambling words were my silly attempt to describe (for myself) a particular feeling, a state-of-mind. To this day, I can recall exactly what I meant by this god-awful prose—but could I or anyone (short of one possessing a Proust-like knack for writing) really, fully put into words what I felt that night? No. Here, language is at best tangential to life; it grazes just so our combined sensory-psycho-emotional experience, barely conveying the actual fact of our experience.

And so a certain degree of alienation is at the heart of our existence, and of our emotive appraisal of who we are and where we stand. This further defines our relationships—it guides our yearning for the approval (or sometimes, denigration) of others, our elevation of carnal acts to spiritual connections, and in tandem, our opinions of the actions of others. I suppose that we can at least recognise that we’re all trying and always failing to possess, or inhabit, or fully understand those we care about. We should recognise that we will never understand why we do each individual thing we do, to each other or to/for ourselves, and that (in truly philosophically-prescriptive fashion) we should be more accepting—not just tolerant of, but accepting—of what we might initially consider the shortcomings of others. And there’s a reciprocal duty on others to recognise that separation, perhaps even to fill-in the gaps of knowledge impeding others from understanding who we are. Simply doing what we do, and expecting nary a judgement, only uncritical acceptance, is as unrealistic as it is unfair.

None of us wants to be judged, but I think we’d all like to be understood. If nothing else, our fumbling attempts at understanding often reveals our regard and love for those whose actions we question. And what could be more worthy of our attention than that?

***

NB These thoughts are made apropos some events in the last few months. They are largely a consequence of a certain amount of bewilderment, and a large degree of live-and-let-live. My apologies if only the bewilderment is explicit in the sloppy, late-night writing.