Let me be your prophet
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The history of politics has been maybe
the best environment for this illusion: at the beginning there were
the kings and priests. They and only they among all humans (and
among, of course, all beings) represented gods, the ultimate
principles of life on Earth and in the entire Universe. Then there
was God, the god of all gods, the principle of all principles. And
with him, his prophets, representatives of the representatives, kings
of all kings, be them present or future, local or foreign. But the
highest rank among humans was reached by the “chosen one”: not
only simple representative of God, but flesh from his flesh. His son.
The incarnated son of the ultimate principle of existence in the
Universe. Throughout the next 2000 years of our civilization,
politics was the process of continuous (re)arrangement of power
between populations, their representatives, the representative of the
representatives and God.
We live today the strange decline of
representativity. It is strange because it coincides with its boldest
claim human logics is capable of: since God himself is dead, and
since the afore-mentioned illusion is structural, it might be that we
are in fact gods. Or even God. It's not yet very clear how, but as
long as there's no one above our heads anymore, we have the freedom
to improvise the making of our godliness.
The best known tools: money and
political positions. The two reinforce each-other, create power,
change laws, start wars, destroy populations and their habitats,
impose austerity, keep all individuals under surveillance. Left and
right are the extremes of the internal power struggle between the
two. The more a state is “social-democratic”, the fastest the
politicians get rich and join the opposite camp. The more “liberal”,
the more powerful the money-owners and the more dependent on them the
politicians.
You allow political or economical power
to grow, it will naturally never stop. Richest humans control the
economical survival of millions; the most powerful politicians treat
the globe as their personal puzzle game. And, on top of it, the
natural environment with all other species, are just details
pestering the main game. If humans can be collateral damage, animal,
plants, rivers and mountains are just accidental urban landscape. The
money-holders and the politicians wipe forests and populations from
the face of the Earth, because they can and because there's no higher
authority to judge them.
From Ecuador to Romania, and from Congo
to United States, natural resources are ripped off at any costs (as
long as they are not in the backyard of the companies' executives )
so that some numbers grow in the computers of some banks. From Syria
to Ukraine and from Afghanistan to Kosovo, people are killed, for
they are just pawns in the hands of the play-makers.
All this happens because we all suffer
from the sick illusion of representativity. Even the poorest thinks
s/he is superior to the animal s/he kills or the tree that s/he cuts.
And any poor individual dreams of becoming rich and powerful, and so
to represent humanity as the highest race, and to represent other
humans as their authority.
It is each any every one of us who
support the concentration of financial and political power in the
hands of few, because we hope to become one of those few. We hope to find the meaning of life by squeezing the life out of the others and consume it. A little like the bloody countess Bathory. The only metaphysical gesture left is to raise your own head above the others.
This sickness might lose us all.
Because the stones don't care about us. We are not more important
than them, but the big realization is that we cannot destroy them. We
cannot tame nature and we cannot destroy nature. We are just like any
other population of bacteria, we take some place, we develop in a
direction or another and we might disappear some day, like any
species. What makes us “special” is that we developed
self-consciousness and with it the ability to commit suicide.But self-consciousness is not superior to having fur or 15 legs.
So let's stop wining about how unjust
“the world” is. The world doesn't care. While we consider normal
that one individual or a few represent a whole nation and decide for
the course of everyone else's life; while we consider normal that one
individual or a few have a financial power equal to that of millions
of other individuals; and while we consider normal to allow the
powerful to decide the faith of the air we breathe; we deserve our
faith, for we provoke it.
The crisis of representativity is so
dazzling that it blinds us. Hopefully we will still be here when
we'll decide to stop allowing our representatives to kill us. Or
when we'll decide to listen to the stones' opinions.
Human communities have no higher goal
than the existential cluelessness of any of its members, let's face
it.
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