By TARSUS GENUS*
The eternity that does not exist is the eternity that thinks about always repeating the same humanity or that thinks that the extinction of humans is impossible
Environment, exclusion, income, insecurity are the most serious problems that, with their regional specificities, offend the possibilities of an ecologically healthy and socially supportive life, in the vast majority of countries in the world. The perseverance of these problems or their “eternity” – whatever you want – does not find the priority it deserves in democratic parties (left-wing or not), whose “purposes” are as a rule buried by identitarianisms that have overcome the bureaucratic inertia of traditional policies: democracy is slow to solve problems, the parties have aged, the power centers of financial capital command the “reforms” and fascism advances.
Denialists think that the world is eternal, that they are eternal and that they will last forever, fixed in an imaginary past. For this reason, they do not need to formulate any purposes that go beyond their petty anchorage in the world, where prejudices and death policies connect one to the other and the fixation on the present must always be preserved. Its most immediate form is the dogmatics of violence, which dissolves the emotional bonds of common life and generates, not a political program for the future, but an association of forces of the violent dominant. Not a national destination community.
Health deniers, climate deniers, prejudiced fascists and other specimens of homicidal Bolsonarism, which took over the country in the presidential elections that preceded Lula's third election, believe they are the masters of eternity. And as they are devoid of purposes that dignify traditional politics itself, within a democratic state governed by the rule of law, they resort to the methods that brought to light the European extreme right of the last century: rotting social democracy from within and taking advantage of parliamentary majorities to weaken the ethos of political democracy.
Its two political menus are clear: take advantage of the crisis of public insecurity that is raging in several parts of the country's large metropolitan regions, to resume the discourse of death and authoritarianism, as a national solution to any crisis; and consolidate a program of reforms promoted by the religions of money, to speculate with the population's feelings regarding issues that can dominate – through their pastors from nowhere – framed by television advertisements and criminal networks of the global extreme right.
What is most worrying about these two issues – public insecurity and conservative reforms in “customs” – is the lack of strategic responses from the federal government, a democratic government that came to power resisting a coup d'état from which it emerged strengthened abroad and within. of the country – (including within the ruling classes) by the redeemed figure of President Lula.
This is because simple repetition is no longer enough to design a “new historical bloc” to govern, within the limits of an era that is ending and another that has yet to be clarified: stability to govern by carrying out progressive reforms to generate and distribute income, face the environmental crisis and regaining a sense of security are no longer “naturally” married.
The great social policies that were the central characteristic of President Lula's two previous governments are not enough to weld a new piece of power, whose fragments in good sectoral policies – by themselves – do not create the idea of a fair nation in an ambitious project of common destiny. From different absurd texts by Jorge Luis Borges in his history of eternity, I captured two gems of his literature that – unlike many of his evasive metaphors – make us see the real world as an ordeal and the languages of this world as mockery.
In the first Borgian formula there is the definition of “eternity”, as “a splendid artifice that frees us, even if only fleetingly, from the intolerable oppression of successive things.” In the second hypothesis, when defining a character he calls Lane, Jorge Luis Borges states that he has “admirable fidelity (as) he lacks purpose, which is positively an advantage.” It is necessary to understand that “eternity”, common life, everyday life, “purposes” that give meaning to immediate life, are new dominant categories that found both a democratic politics and a fascist reaction, but – bad news – they are controllable by calculations logarithmics that come from outside the real lives of the masses and can subject them to any “purposes”.
Now, it is in the intolerable “oppression of the successive” that human beings make and learn their history; or – if they don't want to learn – they suffer it brutally in their flesh, with government disasters, climate disasters, uncontrolled violence and terrible endemic diseases. The “admirable” loyalty in the Borgian line, over those who have no purpose, is already an epic purpose of the fascist right: to return society to its natural state and allow human beings to devour each other. In a world in crisis, in the sick environment of a daily life of misery and pain.
Checked in the real world, Jorge Luis Borges' words are elusive jewels, as the concept of eternity does not free us from the “oppression of the successive”, but reinforces it; and the “lack of purposes”, in turn, is only an advantage for those who make the dispensation of purposes an anarchic project to eliminate those who suffer its unreasonable consequences. This is Javier Milei's project, not Lula da Silva's. This is the project of fascism, not democracy: this is the project of perversion that begins by accepting the apology for torture and ends in the hands of Dr. Mengele.
It is necessary to explain before continuing: “eternity” does not free us from the “oppression of successive”, because where people are slaves they do not deal with concepts, but with needs and eternity, for them, does not exist. And yet: where “fidelity lacks purposes” there are no understood advantages, but behaviors programmed by biology, as in animal life or wills annihilated by repression, as in the pure fascist idea of a life surrounded by myths.
In an old book by Jorge Luis Borges and José Eduardo Clemente, first published in 1952 (The language of Buenos Aires) seems to be an anticipated response from Clemente to the old Borges' language adventures: “Only everyday life gives us the profound dimension of time; this repeated dying every day whose name is life. One of the many streets of eternity.”
The eternity that does not exist is the eternity that thinks about always repeating the same humanity or that believes that the extinction of humans is impossible. All allegiances, in the other part of the story that deals with the real humanities – when they do not clearly present their purposes, have only one objective: to extinguish the barriers of resistance to domination, to say that no one should have purposes of redemption, purposes of equality , radical purposes of freedom.
Neither Borges nor Clemente were political theorists, nor am I a philologist or philosopher, but nothing stops me from bringing to the daily debate an idea about the purposes, which involve us – on the left – in the Gaucho tragedy. This is a small tip of a global environmental imbalance and a brutal local adjustment, made by governments – more or less close to Bolsonarism – that still plague us. Environmental and economic maladjustment is universal, but the particular ways of facing its consequences are always local.
The “adjustment” in the reduction of the State’s public functions is a perverse purpose and the treatment of the State, as the privileged place of corruption and privileges, is always a succession made to perpetuate policies of the most privileged, “outside” the State. All to better exploit it for their private businesses, after demonizing the State for a long period of complicity with most of the traditional media.
I think that the immediate humanitarian assistance (first phase) that brought together civil society and the state, by the three entities of the Union, in possible solidarity with those affected by the climate catastrophe that struck Rio Grande do Sul is working. I believe that the reconstruction (second phase) of infrastructure and support for the reconstruction of civil, commercial, business and housing life, overcoming the natural political imbalances normal in any democracy, will take longer than the governments involved suggest, but it will work reasonably. But we lack something to plan, as civil society of all classes and as a state at all levels. And this something is essential.
It is to immediately begin, within this second phase, a third phase: from strategic planning to begin, in the face of the tragedy that struck Rio Grande do Sul, the construction – from here, of a new socio-environmental and development model with and accelerated growth, capable of serving as an example for the entire national territory.
The production of clean energy, new technologies for environmental control and disaster prediction, state stimulus for “startups“environmentally correct” channels, irrigation and water dispersion channels in water basins and, along the redone and renewed “walls”, environmental parks and water absorption and buffer zones, bold environmental education schools and decent housing – ecologically suitable for these new times – for populations displaced from danger zones, in climate events that will repeat themselves.
This concerted planning can only come from the federal government through a Higher Authority to be definitively installed from January of next year, which remains outside the electoral dispute, as well as whoever represents the state government in this relationship. This way, the eternity of disaster can be avoided, inspiring the country. The federal government, whatever it may be, will be able to commit itself, over the next ten years, to the purpose of building the nation together with Rio Grande do Sul. After all, whoever sings in their anthem that they are a “model for all the land” can begin by inspiring your own country.
*Tarsus in law he was governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, mayor of Porto Alegre, Minister of Justice, Minister of Education and Minister of Institutional Relations in Brazil. Author, among other books, of possible utopia (Arts & Crafts) [https://amzn.to/3ReRb6I]
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