A while ago I published an article on these same pages ("Authors not born") in which he referred to two fellow students, one from school and the other from faculty, from whom, according to all indications, a successful career could be expected. in what they decided to dedicate themselves to but that, finally and for various reasons, did not meet that expectation. After its publication, I immediately began to receive messages from family, friends and acquaintances in general who commented to me, each from their own sphere, that they too could refer to cases very similar to those that I had described in my text. I admit that I did not expect such a large coincidence of testimonies in the same sense, and that this gave me food for thought.
Regarding the diversity of the areas of my communicators, it is important to underline it for the purposes of what I intend to propose below. Because it would be deceptive - not to say directly, cheating - to oppose those who preferred to devote themselves to poetry with those who opted for finances, those who decided to walk the world, from beach to beach, with their surfboard under the arm, in search of the biggest wave to ride with those who competed to be lawyers of the State, who gave themselves up to music with those who made it to politics, or to the plastic arts with whom they devoted themselves to the militia to then side with the alleged losers from the point of view of power, money or social brilliance. It's not about that. It would be too Manichean and demagogic an approach to be acceptable.
Rather, it is a matter of attending to the fact that, in a certain sense, my heterogeneous correspondents came to ratify that those who dedicated themselves to poetry, surfing, music or the plastic arts declare that in their respective fields it is almost repeated Exactly the same, and the highest symbolic and real place are not always the best. With which the easy, helpful and comforting explanation according to which the opposition would develop between, on the one hand, some idealists who follow the call of their vocation without attending to any factor alien to it that sets them apart from their path, in front of Those who, on the other hand, adhere fiercely to the reality principle, professionally engaging in well-paid and prestigious activities in which Darwinian competition is fierce and not always the most valuable but the strongest or the most astute, triumphs, seems to be undone a sugar.
It has ended by accepting that at the head of the greatest powers on the planet, occupying the places from which the most far-reaching decisions are to be made, are people who provoke the shame of others
Now, that meritocracy in the strict sense does not work according to what spheres is something that seems to have ended up being completely assumed in our society, in which, to give an example as devastating as it is depressing, it has ended up accepting -to these heights without batting an eye - that at the head of the greatest powers on the planet, occupying the places from which the most far-reaching decisions have to be made, may be people who frequently provoke real shame on their behavior and words. However, and being undoubtedly infinitely less important, it would seem that in general we are reluctant to accept that meritocratic demands are also not met in other spheres, let us say more related to the spirit, in which things are supposed to work according to different parameters, less contaminated with elements outside the spirit itself.
But it is not, and I am not discovering anything new by pointing it out. Perhaps it was always a comforting fantasy to believe that spaces existed that were safe from the impurities of the world when, in fact, there never were, and in every society the dominant sphere at every moment contaminates with its logic the rest of the spheres. It would not cost us at all to find in the past episodes and practices that would prove that also among those who dedicated themselves to the most exalted tasks the worst vices of the society of that time were reproduced. Although, undoubtedly, it is still easier for us to locate examples of this in our present.
Indeed, behaviors proliferate around us in which the aforementioned contamination is clearly seen. Thus, in the same way that many politicians, assuming the logic of the consumer society, treat citizens as customers to be flattered so that they acquire the merchandise that they themselves constitute, as well as often many intellectuals, before setting out to write a journalistic piece, they ask themselves the question of "who am I good with today" (again, Javier Marías dixit ), that is, to whom I give my ears to predispose them in favor of my products. It is just one of the many examples that could be offered.
The conclusion follows almost alone. In the face of such generalized ways of proceeding, it is not surprising that there are those who prefer to depart from such models and instead accept, as a regulating criterion of their own existence, that recommendation, of a profound wisdom, of the old Epicurus. You guessed it: he was thinking about his "hidden life". Although I am aware that in times of unleashed exhibitionism promoted by social networks, the phrase will seem like a complete oxymoron to many.