June just. July It was already and there were still pitahayas. The last and therefore less sweet. I was even able to find them in Mexico City, outside the subway. Or maybe they found me. The fact is that one day in June I received a message that felt strange. A friend from here, -that is to say from sinaloa,- He asked me to bring him a copy of the book I was reading and others. She knew that I read, like every June, The Invincible Summer of Liliana, by Cristina Rivera Garza. What I felt strange was that she asked me to take her books to culiacanas if it were 2011 and it was still difficult to get titles in sinaloa. As if the networks had not grown and there were no services that bring things to your door that arrive from the other side of the world, and that in terms that are measured in a few days.
He was somewhat rarefied with the idea, he was with that great book in his hands, on a terrace with the cool and polluted Mexico City “like fireflies” before my eyes, had pitahayas; the matter and point is that the message-request made me reflect. Just opening the refrigerator, or analyzing the origin of what we as individuals carry with us, is to see a world of complexity. In general terms, there is practically nothing that is not the result of multiple joint actions of people unknown to each other; That works for material or intellectual goods, and unfortunately also for things like pollution or disease, for crime. In the days of the pandemic, the philosopher edgar morin (Paris, 1921), stated that the global emergency revealed the lack of brotherhood and progress in consciousness among countries and peoples, unleashing waves of nationalism and selfishness. And it is about some of his ideas, and because it is his birthday tomorrow, that I will talk about the thought of edgar morin.
In his work, the french philosopher exposes how despite our advances as a planetary species, we are still unable to get rid of vital problems, such as hunger, fanaticism, the latent risk of massive destruction weapons and the environmental degradation. Issue that, as a species, leaves us at the crossroads of either dying or changing, this choice being to take the path to transform ourselves, to make a metamorphosis at the species level.
We live, -explains morin-, in a time of chaos in which the forces of destruction are intertwined with the forces of creation and survival. The latter being not yet powerful enough to meet its objective. And that is why we need to consider a fundamental change, with the petty objective of nothing less than survival. This fundamental change would mean a metamorphosis of how we think and what we do. For morin, it is the creative forces of humanity that, upon awakening, can produce metamorphoses. It is thus, by way of paradox, that the also sociologist explains that what leads us to the abyss as a species can be, at the same time, what leads us to salvation. “If there is hope, it is inseparable from the despair from which it will be born.”
His ideas, like that of the so-called Complex thinkingare key to rethinking our time, this time of so many uncertainties and in which as a human species we are all facing unprecedented challenges.
In case you didn’t read it:
#Rethinking #Edgar #Morin