All
I am an American in the peace and luxury of my lakeside home on a quiet
Sunday. Reading the latest novel, The Years of Laura Diaz, by Carlos
Fuentes, a former Mexican embassador to France, which the Washington
Post Book World proclaimed is its Favorite Book of the Year. While the
television builds the mythology with the tale of an exhausted firemen,
in disbelief, as he carries a severed pair of bound hands to a forensic
expert who will dispassionately identify the source of our tom morrows'
nights mares.
As the eyes Laura Diaz illuminate the intellectual, cultural, and bloody
revolutions twentieth century I see the "Why?" easily. The histories of
our (humankinds) "How's" lead directly to Tuesday's "Why's ?". As I read
Fuentes' fictional "Whys" I asked do we really think that these old
"How's" will somehow lead to new "Whys?" I think we will be again be
very sadly mistaken.
"Laura Diaz remembered Jorge Maura's words- there's no need to change
life, no need to transform the world. We have to diversify life. We have
give up the illusion that a recovered unity is the key to a new
paradise. We have to see difference as a value. Difference strengthens
identity. Jorge Maura had said he found himself between two truths: that
the world was going to save itself, and the world was doomed. Both are
true: capitalism's corrupt society is doomed, but the revolution's ideal
society is also doomed."
Not only do we have to see 'difference as a VALUE" we have to see
reality as VALUES, as moral VALUES. And the only way that the dynamic
value of terrorism will die is if it has no way to latch, no way to
become and continue to be a static pattern of evil value. And
terrorism's biggest latch is suffering.
You can't bomb away suffering, any more than you can legislate love.
Follow the life of adulteress Laura's lover, Jorge, the Spanish aristo,
intellectual, communist, diplomat as after helping to bring about
revolution finds himself as a W.W.II Red Cross worker inspecting
Buchenwald finding his true love Racheal on the other side of the fence.
And even though he knows she is there by choice, futilely try to help.
Ask, as he does:
"what is the virtue of your virtue, my love, the love of my love, the
justice of my justice, the compassion of my compassion?"
Can you answer,
"I want to share your suffering, the way you share the suffering of your
people. That is the love of my love."
So our question becomes:
Will I/you leave "the peace and luxury of my/your lakeside home "to
relieve the suffering of others ?
And if we do will they answer, as Racheal did,
"I don't want to be pitied, Jorge, I'd rather be persecuted."
Or do we,
"Believe in the opportunites of freedom" "Remember that politics is
secondary to personal integrity. Without personal integrity the social
[physical, biological, intellectual] life is not worth living."
The political question is not, Why? but How? And that decision will
define the values for the rest of this new millennium.
3WD
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