Pacifismo, ecologismo y política alternativa

Incluido en la colección de pensamiento crítico del diario Público (iniciativa, por cierto, innovadora y encomiable), este volumen recoge una serie de ensayos escritos por Manuel Sacristán entre 1979 y 1985 sobre los temas mencionados en el título mismo: ecologismo, pacifismo, marxismo, asuntos y debates internos del PCE y el PSUC, la situación general de la izquierda en España, etc. Aunque se trata de un libro claramente situado en la tradición marxista, que no es la mía, merece la pena no obstante leerlo por algunas de las reflexiones que hace el autor sobre temas que todavía nos ocupan, sobre todo en lo que respecta a la naturaleza intrínseca del sistema capitalista como un régimen de explotación despiadada del medio ambiente capaz de reificar hasta las propias relaciones humanas.

Ficha técnica:
Título: Pacifismo, ecologismo y política alternativa.
Autor: Manuel Sacristán.
Editorial: Icaria Editorial/Diario Público.
Edición: edición especial de diario Público, Madrid, octubre 2009 (1985).
Páginas: 270 páginas.
ISBN: 437008-877778

The truth about the deliberations on the Senate floor.

Here is another topic that we tend to idealize. Who has not heard those paeans about how the Senate of the past, unlike that of today, truly made it possible to hold meaningful debates where one could change the Senators' minds? Now, did that truly ever happen, especially in modern times? I seriously doubt it. The legislative process is long, far loner than most citizens (especially those who never get involved in politics, who are the majority) imagine. The decisions are not truly made on the Senate floor, but rather in innumerable meetings and negotiations that take place behind the curtains. What we see on our TV is just the final staging of the whole process. Little else. As Obama explains:

...my colleagues and I don't spend much time on the Senate floor. Most of the decisions —about what bills to call and when to call them, about how amendments will be handled and how uncooperative senators will be made to cooperate— have been worked out well in advance by the majority leader, the relevant committee chairman, their staffs, and (depending on the degree of controversy involved and the magnanimity of the Republican handling the bill) their Democratic counterparts. By the time we reach the floor and the clerk starts calling the roll, each of the senators will have determined —in consultation with his or her staff, caucus leader, preferred lobbysts, interest groups, constituent mail, and ideological leanings— just how to position himself on the issue.

(Barack Obama: p. 14)

However, the important thing to notice here is that it is actually good that things happen this way. Why? First of all, because any piece of legislation is negotiated between the different parties involved, which means that the interests of different sections of the citizenry will be taken into account, therefore improving the process in the sense of making it more democratic. But, second, because it guarantees that the decisions are made over a period of time that is long enough to incorporate other elements into the process (input from the interest groups involved and affected by the piece of legislation at hand, feedback from the constituents, the point of view of the opponents and possible ways to work them into the final law...). Sure, the system is imperfect, but still much better than anything else human beings ever devised in the past. Or, to put it in very clear terms: once again, the perfect deliberation that so many people have in mind, where each and every legislator intervenes to present his or her point of view and listen to that of the others, adapting the final vote to what is discussed on the floor, is purely theoretical. It doesn't exist and never did exist... thank goodness. For, as I explain, neither the regular citizens nor the different organizations and interest groups representing them would ever have a say in such a "perfect" system.

A well entrenched cynicism towards politics & public service.

Obama starts his book telling us about the cynical attitude that many Americans adopt when discussing politics:

It's been almost ten years since I first ran for political office. I was thirty-five at the time, four years out of law school, recently married, and generally impatient with life. A seat in the Illinois legislature had opened up, and several friends suggested that I run, thinking that my work as a civil rights lawyer, and contacts from my days as a community organizer, would make me a viable candidate. After discussing it with my wife, I entered the race and proceeded to do what every first-time candidate does: I talked to anyone who would listen. I went to block club meetings and church socials, beauty shops and barbershops. If two guys were standing on a corner, I would cross the street to hand them campaign literature. And everywhere I went, I'd get some version of the same two questions.

"Where'd you get that funny name?"

And then: "You seem like a nice enough guy. Why do you want to go into something dirty and nasty like politics?"

I was familiar with the question, a variant on the questions asked of me years earlier, when I'd first arrived in Chicago to work in low-income neighborhoods. It signaled a cynicism not simply with politics but with the very notion of a public life, a cynicism that —at least in the South Side neighborhoods I sought to represent— had been nourished by a generation of broken promises. In response, I would usually smile and nod and say that I understood the skepticism, but that there was —and always had been— another tradition to politics, a tradition that stretched from the days of the country's founding to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done.

(Barack Obama: pp. 1-2)

It's not something limited to the US, of course. Most Europeans view politics (not to talk of the politicians themselves) with the very same cynicism. Is it something new? Is this cynicism something that identifies our era, as many argue? I'm not so sure about it. We always hear of a past when things were supposedly better, people more straightforward and honest. However, it only takes a quick trip to the archives to see the letters to the editor from thirty, forty, sixty years ago. They dealt with the very same issues. They displayed the very same missaprehension towards politicians and businessmen, always considered the self-serving elite. My feeling is that there never was a golden age of politics, where our politicians were all humble statesmen who gave their lives away to serve the people. That is always an interpretation we make afterwards, years later, decades later even, way after the facts. On the spot, when it truly matters, a sizable chunk of citizens (perhaps the majority) always felt skeptical about their leaders. That's not news, I think. In that sense, there is no need to be overly pessimistic about it either. We are not going downhill, as some might have it.

The Audacity of Hope. Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.

Second book written by Barack Obama, and number one on the New York Times' and Amazon's best-seller lists. Obama deals with most of the issues that would later become the central piece of his campaign to win the American Presidency in 2008: the divide between Republicans and Democrats, often considered to be artificial by Obama; what he considers to be the most important American values; his interpretation of the US Constitution; issues of faith, race and opportunity, etc. All in all, the book can be read as a political manifesto of sorts, a summary of the platform Barack Obama would later run on in 2008.


Technical description:
Title: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.
Author: Barack Obama.
Publisher: Three Rivers Press.
Edition: first paperback edition, New York (USA), 2006.
Pages: 375 pages, including index.
ISBN: 978-0-307-23770-5

Creatures with a thousand names.

Again, very much in the postmodern tradition, parts of Vurt read like an ancient Zen scroll with its difficult to understand metaphores about reality:

Beyond all this lies the FIFTH LEVEL. Fifth level beings have a thousand names, but Robomandogshadowvurt isn't one of them. They have a thousand names because everybody calls them something different. Call them what you like —you're never going to meet one. Fifth level beings are way up the scale of knowledge and they don't like to mingle. Maybe they don't even exist.

(Jeff Noon: p. 266)

Who are these beings then? They exist in the Vurt, sure. We know that much. But do they just live there or do they also have existence on this other side of reality? Because, once we start playing with the notion of virtual reality, that's precisely one of the problems: where do we draw the line? How do we distinguish what is real from what is not anymore? In the end, reality cannot be named. Or, to put it a different way, all its entities have a myriad of names (i.e., many different identities that coexist in one "being"). All this connects more with old Zen and Taoist concepts than with our own Western philosophical tradition, bent on building castles in the air since its very beginnings (long-lasting ideas that belong in the realm of metaphysics, where things supposedly remain as they truly are, unchanged and perfect. In other words, a chimera.

The real meaning of virtual reality: it has no meaning

Interesting conversation between Tristan and Scribb over the meaning of it all:

"Don't get involved, Scribb. Some crazy religion, that's all. They think Vurt's more than it is, you know? Like it's some higher way or something. It's not. Vurt is just collective dreamings. That's all. Christ! Isn't that enough for them?"

(Jeff Noon: p. 220)

No, there is nothing special behind it. No hidden reality. No deep knowledge. No supernatural experience. It's all made up. It's a collective dream. A collective work of art that we all create at the same time. And yet, isn't that fascinating enough? Doesn't that prove our power to create new realities, new worlds without a need to go further beyond what is there? What need is there to invent a religion to explain it all?

It's all very postmodern, actually. In that sense, Vurt is a clear member of the cyberpunk tradition invented by William Gibson and others.