Augusto Manzanal Ciancaglini
Political scientist
Within the intermittent readjustments called cultural crises, this is an era of ideological inconsistency entangled in a polarization dragged by echo chambers and virtual feedback. In this game a sector advances through irrepressible frustrated fantasy to the very bowels of the State to take a perplexed and wandering selfie.
With these digital barbarians, simple slogans are not a sufficient response, for they corner into the mediocrity of generalization in a flat dynamic, which is the most visible. However, beneath the images circulates thought and research that slowly exudes. Reality is not an aggravated cordon from the hopeful “Yes, We Can” to the desolate “I can’t breathe”. Holstering the cries means that particular reason needs general understanding.
Paradox is the logic of the human condition and in this sense non-existence is an engine that unveils existence when the road is paved with foolishness. Iconoclasts and conspiracy theorists travel in this way, straying through parallel worlds that are continually vanishing, stumbling through the audiovisual social guts of political projects.
A recurrent figure within these paths exemplifies all the processes: Christopher Columbus, who does not belong only to the Italians and Hispanics, represents, with all his contradictions, the greatest symbol of that individual restlessness and ambition so American, besides being the most important factor for existence; if that crazy Genoese had not provoked that incredible adventure, today nothing would be as it is. Therefore, the hatred of Columbus, as the face of European colonialism and mainly as the personification of the black legend of the Spanish Empire, is not only to the maturity of the historical perspective, but also to the intellectual honesty of gathering the enormous inspiration of his decisive global paternity.
Bipolarization adjusts, aspiring to absolutes, from non-existence to existence and vice versa, which contains a certain friction between rationality and irrationality: history cannot only be starred by desperate escapes from reality combated by vandalism to truth; understanding sneaks in through pedagogical ways to interrupt the traumatic products caused by these manipulations among expired falsehoods. A very relevant exponent, which is closely related to some consequences of that self-discovery inaugurated by the human admiral, is racism, whose ideological instrumentality proves increasingly unfeasible to excite certain processes in the face of the current levels of development in various human spheres.
Another Italian closer to home has left another inspiration in the form of scientific knowledge: the biologist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza demonstrated that human beings are quite homogeneous genetically and the differences between individuals are more important than those seen between groups. In other words, there are no collective genotypes, therefore, even if it remains firmly social, the concept of human race has long since been banished from science. The typical human vice for the non-existent is as real as the non-existence of genetic purity.
The dialectic of falsehood is broken by understanding this, for if there is no race there is no racism. Thus the superficial collapses, the only way to disarm the ignorant and make the individual independent. It will be necessary to think of more gradual and less grouping concepts that facilitate the individual to slide freely through culture, through its tendencies and products without compartmentalizing them in the cells of the unalterable tradition seasoned by empty creations.
All in all, the best treatment for these complicated and paradoxical human processes relies on patient progress that admits that lies are a frequent human vehicle, as long as in its rubbing and among the dust of confusion it raises, sparks emerge that light up reality as a response with greater momentum: history is loaded with promising examples. The Santa Maria was burned after being transformed into Fort Navidad, but it had already arrived.
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