Ruiz-Domènec: “We are in a situation comparable to the 1950s”

—The book begins by saying that “the cultural battle is not an ideological war: it is much more.” What is it?

—Indeed, it is much more, because it is a debate of ideas that aims to create a model of civilization. That’s the difference. An ideological war, at its core, is a controversy over the political hegemony of a social, political or economic sector. The cultural battle develops on fronts ranging from historiography to the novel, from art to cinema. All the elements that are part of culture have intervened in this immense cultural battle with so many faces. This period that I trace is intended to seek harmony in society, and the paradox is that it has not been found. A consensus has been sought, even hard, but it has not been found, and that is why we are where we are. I believe that the future objective is to find that harmony, always through debate. The debate entered the culture of humanity to stay. It is no longer possible to think of a civilization that does not debate its ideas.

—Aren’t we using the term correctly when we talk about cultural battle?

—Not really. The term is being abused. There is talk of cultural battles for everything that is an ideological conflict. What this does is reduce it. The current fight over whether to cancel things or not is another segment of the cultural battle. The cancellation is part of a much more important fact: determining the model of civilization to which we aspire.

—He defends that starting in 1871 it is the West that wins that battle.

—I’m talking about the long 20th century, these 150 years in which the West has staked its model of civilization in that cultural battle. And probably by not finding harmony, the West now finds itself facing a difficult situation: either a revision of its values, or the disappearance as a model of civilization. It is a crossroads that you are at right now because you have not found harmony. If it had found harmony, the West would probably be very strengthened and very renewed.

—What has the West been missing?

—Intellectual generosity. It is an era that was born, as is clearly seen in the book, at the hands of Nietzsche: it is an existential attitude of how the individual faces a problem. There has been no generosity in renewing and profound ideas. It was not had with Nietzsche. He was a man so fascinating and at the same time so criticized that his work was almost buried. And yet, constantly, throughout these 150 years, it has been returned to as a germinative element of that cultural battle to redefine the West and Western civilization. There are civilizations that have been generous and have lasted, and there are civilizations that have been selfish and have not lasted. And that is what has been missing, a social, cultural and aesthetic generosity towards the architects of culture.

—Has the West been selfish?

—Yes, and a coward. He has been very cowardly in critical moments. He recognized the authors too late. This suspicion of youth is ignorance of history. It happened with Nietzsche when he was 23 years old. Schlegel was 22 years old when he wrote the history of literature. That selfishness is cowardice.

—Is a cultural battle won through thought or through weapons?

—From thought, it is evident. The cultural battle is an expression of the spring of the spirit. The proposals that are being made can be read in Joyce, in Picasso’s ‘The Young Ladies of Avignon’, in Schönberg’s serialism… Therefore, these 150 years are an ocean of culture that needs to be understood. Military wars are the expression of the failure of not having achieved harmony in a cultural battle. When there are no longer enough arguments in the debate, then the weapons begin. It has been done over the centuries, over the millennia, and it has been a mistake, because wars do not solve the problem. The problem is in understanding the opposite; That is the beginning of dialogue. After the great explosion between 1870 and 1914, when everything was transformed, from physics, thermodynamics, the novel, painting, music… We already had all the tools prepared to achieve precisely that harmony that the avant-garde proposed with a language renewed in all aspects, and society slides towards self-destruction, in a 30-year war that goes from 1914 to 1945. The great wars have always lasted 30 years. For 30 years, Europeans, and the world in general, have been dragged into a process of self-destruction. Starting in 1948, everything had to be reconstructed again, once again, in another cultural battle. What is the model to solve? Yes, the capitalist model or the socialist model. The Cold War is a very intense cultural battle in all aspects. I have faced iconic characters of her; for example, debating between Salinger and Pasternak.

—What is new in the use of lies in these battles?

—Lie is an element of rhetoric, and rhetoric has been part of human culture since the 6th or 5th century BC. It was already defined by the sophists, Aristotle defined it… Lying is a rhetorical game. We have been surprised by how lies have infiltrated very massive media, for example, social networks, and have caught us off guard. At a certain moment, and this is the reason for this book, in our illusion we had considered the cultural battle over. We had believed that the story was over. This monumental oversight caught many of us in the 80s taking refuge in short-term analyses, forgetting the advice of the great masters, who said that to understand a phenomenon you have to go to the long term. And indeed, if we look at the long term, the debate was not over; On the contrary, it was about to begin, and with new technological procedures as well.

—Are we in a moment of special confrontation?

—Yes, because the West has to rethink itself and has to offer alternatives to the masked and silent imperialism that exists. The West has become very plural and has to defend its cause within that plurality. The diversity of the West will give way to a new stage of that endless mourning. Our great weakness would be to say that we have failed. The feeling of failure, which has been felt many times, such as that expressed by great figures of German culture in the 1920s who speak of disenchantment, is because they think that this is over, without realizing that others were already proposing alternatives. so that it wouldn’t end. The Second World War is the most failed war of all: it started badly and ended worse. A recovery of the basic principles of existence began again: the methodology of social use, education, economic renewal, social balance… Now we are in a situation very comparable to our 50s. It is the landscape after a immense unresolved cultural battle.

—What are the main threats facing Western civilization?

—Not finding oneself, weakening and entering into debate with other civilizations that are on the rise without argumentative firmness, purifying what is exactly typical of Western civilization, which is not a supremacist, nor racial, nor even historical element, simply a recognition of an intense cultural legacy that must be purged. The West has to defend its legacy in the debate, but not to impose it. This fortunately ended in the 30 royalist years of the 19th century. It ended with a very interesting and controversial social event: the French commune of 1871, where in a very brilliant and naive way at the same time all the arguments of a debate that has lasted to this day are presented: what does the working class do, what is its role in history… The West needs to rearm itself through education, which in the 12th century created a different model of civilization, which allowed access to critical analysis of texts that were prohibited in other civilizations. Even to read sacred texts as one reads a secular text. This creates a civilization where criticism is predominant. I believe that we are going to a world with several simultaneous civilizations and each one has to develop its own in a great global debate.

—Isn’t that the situation we already have?

—There is going to be a very significant change in the coming years, which is the recognition of global diversity. We come from an illusion that is born from globalization. In reality, globalization is a trade mechanism. Globalization is a hidden imperialism. And there are civilizations that are organizing themselves internally and are going to demand respect for them. Let there be no interference on them. And we will have to sit down to debate in international forums. At the moment they are not doing it. The last impulse, the neorealism of the end of the last century, which emerged from the 9/11 attack in New York, has proven to be a total failure. ‘I’m going to impose American democracy on the world.’ Maybe the world doesn’t want it. Our values, we have them, must be debated, not imposed. I believe that we will reach an agreement that there are five or six great civilizations on Earth. It has already happened in other times in history that there are civilizations that do not want to be like you and a balance has been found. It’s not going to be easy, of course. Nothing is easy in history. And that’s what makes her attractive; Otherwise, it would be boring.