Erasmo Calzadilla: I find it difficult to introduce myself in public. I've tried many times but it doesn’t flow. I’m more less how I appear in my posts, add some unpresentable qualities and stir; that should do for a first approach. If you want to dig a little deeper, ask me for an appointment and wait for a reply.
September 23, 2015 |
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Erasmo Calzadilla
Cuba dió la bienvenida al papa Francisco. Photo: Juan Suárez
HAVANA TIMES — Dear brothers and sisters, the crisis that scourges civilization today is without a doubt a crisis of consciousness. Material developments such as finding an ideal energy source, eliminating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, halting the growth of populations and changing the prevailing social model shall not be enough to overcome it.
All of these problems are interrelated and are the symptoms of a greater predicament. Should we solve any individual issue (the energy one, for instance, through the mastery of nuclear fusion), we would face a worse problem in the blink of an eye. When we dared change our social model, a system worse than or as bad as the previous came along.
Fixing a given problem by doing more of the same and doing so more intensely is retreating in a forward direction. In a finite and nearly exhausted world like ours, doing this is surest path to failure. We must stop and change our model. We have to move beyond the state of adolescence humanity is in.
I use the word “adolescence” with the utmost respect for those who are going through this stage, as this is the time in life in which the body develops but the mind lags behind – and this is what appears to be happening to us. The eyes of the soul open, the quasi-Christian Socrates used to say, when those of the body begin to fail.
I do not believe this is anyone’s fault. I do not believe a handful of sinister conspirators took advantage of the media to produce a mass of compulsive consumers and brainless followers of charismatic leaders. No, from my point of view, it is a coming-of-age crisis, a natural step in humanity’s development, the absurd extension of the idea of humanity that blossomed in the Renaissance.
For the Renaissance man, the world was a kind of boundless garden where he could run about and curiously pry into everything, a universe full of beings that dominate and conquer without the slightest remorse.
For a very long time, we believed the Renaissance had been a great step towards liberation, humanity’s return to the light after many years of darkness, ridding ourselves definitively of the burden represented by a belief in a transcendent awareness that keeps watch over us. Now is the time to finally understand that it wasn’t so simple, that the Earth is not our playground but a vital domain to which we are profoundly linked. It is time to realize that there is a spiritual connection between beings and that this transcendent awareness is always there, even if we choose to ignore it.
In the course of five centuries, the strapping young lad of the Renaissance has become a slacker. He has already drunk the amniotic fluid and wants to continue the good life. He’s already shat all over the womb but, instead of cleaning up after himself, he wants to head off to another planet to conquer and contaminate. This brat is willing to do anything save grow up. Luckily, there are no planets to pillage and plunder nearby.
To mature psychologically doesn’t appear that hard. We need not become Yogis, monks, mystics, saints, or practitioners of Toltec rituals, faithful followers of Jesus Christ or another great spiritual teacher. It would suffice to check our compulsion to consume and grow economically. It would suffice to think and act with a bit of secular common sense, as the earthly is divine as well.
But no, even that seems too complicated for us. Capitalist inertia is unbreakable and the collective mind offers no signs of being mature enough to overcome it.
If we continue down this road, soon we will come to a crossroads: leaping towards adulthood or retreating to ignorance and brutality.
Long live freedom, anarchy and free sex. Amen.
Oh, and please don’t forget to pray for me.
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