By TARSUS GENUS*
The essential and universal thing at this moment, however, is to save lives
They are two relatively distant cities on the Gaucho map that are shaken by the same tragic fate. It involves immediate political issues and structural issues, within the formation and composition of the territory itself. The essential and universal thing at this moment, however, is to save lives: alleviate suffering, extend a helping hand and not allow disputes and versions to hinder – inside and outside the left field – the solidarity and empathy that people can build in times of disaster. .
The partial or complete destruction of cities by war, fire or natural phenomena – whether caused by human beings or not – is a constant in history. To us, however, this may seem distant and exceptional, as absurdity and terror only become real when they knock on our door. This destiny, however, has those responsible, but their search cannot now block the essential.
Sartre referred to the category of “fragility” when he inquired about the absurdities of destruction, “when being returns to nothingness” and disappears as an impalpable form to our immediate senses. Fragility, however, is contained and alert: both in the structure of the city that invaded the natural balance, and in the ties that unite humans in their daily sociality.
In the great catastrophes that victimized cities throughout their millennial journey, two constants can be identified: the emergence of solidarity in the face of pain and death, as well as the emergence of inhumanity, which competes with human solidarity movements and can annihilate them. This ambivalence, which communicates the human who chooses between alternatives, and nature – with its predictable laws – is the territory of catastrophe and resistance.
Evidence of the enemy's brutality in the war that occupied the conquered city – or the force of nature that generated collective pain – can cause ruptures in the chains of internal solidarity in the destroyed city. And they do so, either through the shift of part of the city's community to support the occupying enemy – combined with pure and simple internal banditry – or through the emergence of a new organized banditry.
Internal organized banditry is the easiest to confront, based on mechanisms of non-natural legality – the “legal legality” created by the socialization of humans – which is the only one that can block the capture of the city by this organized banditry. Both to block the occupying enemy and to relativize the natural laws that only allow the survival of the fittest.
All of these are traces of history, when the differentiation between the internal and the external were verifiable, empirically, but this changes when we are aware that the internal and external no longer exist: criminals here are criminals from abroad who, through logarithmic gymnastics, speak to the right people with the right messages and take advantage of their minds weakened by perversion to undermine solidarity and establish absolute evil.
Today, May 12, 2024, it is circulating on specialized networks in “fake news” a video from a strange scoundrel who – virtual or real – says that the authorities of the Brazilian State – in collusion with China – are deliberately causing the climate tragedy here in the South, artificially causing rain to generate chaos, death and hopelessness, aiming at leftist “political” ends.
This is a small and brutal demonstration of the tardiness and perversity of the global extreme right, which by monetizing its absolute evil intends to undermine the magnificent example of solidarity that today crosses the Rio Grande – from south to north – with the majority of its political and political organizations. representations of civil society.
An essay by Adson Cristiano Bolli and Ramatis Lima (Arquitexto, 131.04 - year 11 - April 2011) cites an important text by Hans-Georg Gadamer on the irreversibility of the destruction of cities, mentioning destructive historical events in the episodes of Hiroshima, New York (fire 1776), Dresden, Havre, showing that the partial reconstruction of cities – as will occur here in several regions of Rio Grande do Sul – as well as the total reconstruction of cities such as Roca Sales and Eldorado, will not return the cities to what they were .
Over the ashes, scars and debris of destroyed spaces, cities will no longer be the same, as they will always be different after a gravity impact that hits their soul and their lacerated materiality. “Some broken and twisted parts” must be exposed “as a memory of the disappeared city”, which will remain intact in the consciousness of those who survived the disaster.
What will hang is immaterial: the acts of bravery, the vision of the other as a brother, the memories of the dead and missing, the courage of the fearless, the champions of material and immaterial solidarity – civil and military – who may remain as “ethos” superior of the other recomposed city. But for this memory to be strong and free, the destroyers of humanity must answer for their crimes, so that the rule of law can show the greatness of its laws and the possibilities of the Republic and democracy, also under reconstruction in our still sick country. by hateful Bolsonarism and climate denialism.
*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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