 | ||
|
||
| English | Español | Deutsch | Русский |
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
Times of adversity Introduction by Emilio Adolfo Rivero That we recognize ourselves as rational proves that we are. There is pleasure in that recognition. It sets humanity apart from the animal kingdom, distinguishes us from the brute. Humanity has developed rationality through aeons of evolution. But we realize, perhaps painfully, that traits remain from the past. The long transit has left scars that will fade only with continued steps forward. We understand that, in many ways, we are prisoners of commands that come with life, instincts we cannot simply shed like old skin. Those who satisfied the first instinct, for survival, gained power over and high status in their environments. The most powerful won preferential positions from which to satisfy the second instinct, for reproduction. Propelled by these instincts, which are indispensable to the species, groups went forth and multiplied, gave themselves names, made use of and suffered under climates, sought to escape the ordeals of the present, and, remembering in terror the ancestral past, strove to take captive a better tomorrow. Reason’s development has increased our wants and desires, has given birth to yearnings limited only by the time needed to satisfy them. These yearnings have aims beyond survival and reproduction; but, confused by and immersed in ancestral cravings, we may imagine them to be vital urgencies. So has developed the need for social and political mechanisms to satisfy them. The development of communication technologies has broken the links between territory and resources. Today, human groups with extremely limited geographical space and without natural riches are among the planet’s wealthiest. But the ancestral link between soil and subsistence persists. So millions of lives, each a real potential, are sacrificed before ideas of diminishing value, before wrongly read instincts. Taking a life destroys universal possibilities. The thoughts of one can enlighten the whole. This is, and has been, true in science, art, philosophy and politics. But, as Freud remarked, Eros and Thanatos coexist in the human being; creation and destruction work side by side. To paraphrase William Blake, we live in heaven…and we live in hell…at the same time. Russia, Germany, the United States, Latin America, and the Middle East have given much to civilization; yet their histories record pages of infamy. We shall dare to read some of these pages. Can it be fruitful to remember what has been destroyed? Perhaps. If such remembrance be taken as wise counsel for the day.
Washington, D.C. June 13, 2007
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
. |
||||||||||||||||||||
 |