The forgetfulness of the future

This week my oldest son has a history test on the wars of religion.

Taking his lesson I find that, although he has learned all the dates and all the names, there is something in him that leads him to constantly confuse Catholics and Protestants.

While I try to make him understand the differences, I get to thinking about the faces of those men who killed themselves for banal gestures and imprecise notions when seeing how history ended up mixing black and white in the name of which they were taken colors.

I also think that the children of the future will confuse our nationalists on both sides, since hate, like love, makes us equal, and the

of resentment and revenge are a bit like Borges' "theologians", who They discovered after their death that in the eyes of the unfathomable divinity they formed a single person.

But I have to concentrate, because my son is already after the assassination of good Henri IV at the hands of the fanatic—Catholic? Protestant?—François Ravaillac.

As I listen to him, I remember that, according to Herodotus, the Persians tied murderers to the corpse of their victims so that their own worms would take charge of avenging them.

Whether they are winners or losers, those who hate each other always end up fused in the same murderous embrace.

"Choose your enemy well," Nietzsche said, "because you will end up looking like him."

Of course, said resemblance is not physical or cultural, but ethical. It does not matter that the parties in turn identify with different languages, races, religions or nations. That way of understanding what we are is nothing more than a dream of unanimity based on a trifle. The narcissism of minimal differences that Freud spoke of. No, we definitely cannot base our identity on a few accidental attributes, but on the substantive fact of how we have decided to live.

Verum ipsum factum

(“the truth is to do it”), said Gianbattista Vico.

For also the truth of our identity is what we do.

And what we do, as Spinoza taught us in his

of him, either increases or decreases life.

So if the enemies end up looking so much alike, it's because their respective existences have been equally diminished by the shared habit of hating each other.

It is an empty resemblance, like that of holes, from which a true difference can never emerge.

The trunk of the identity is ethical, and everything else is going around the bush talking about the roots.

Under this perspective, the game board of identity changes radically. Defending our identity can no longer consist in hating those we consider different and loving those we consider similar (which usually goes in this order), but in promoting what benefits life, even when it seems to be detrimental to our differences. superficial. Beyond the veil, or the flag, of appearances, “a fool is he who does foolish things”, as Forrest Gump's mother used to say.

Seeking friendship with those who are different, opening up to new languages ​​and cultures, frequenting foreign perspectives, helping those who really need it and seeking truth and justice above their own interests are the only substantive activities from which an identity can naturally spring. solid.

While deforming, avoiding or harming the other, and accepting lies and injustice, are acts that weaken and deform it, even when we say or believe that they are done “in self-defense”.

We are all that Gombrowicz character who sighed: “I don't know who I am, but I suffer when they deform me”.

In short, we need a Copernican revolution that changes our way of conceiving identity, which must stop revolving around some eccentric adjectives, to start orbiting around a single solar center, of an ethical nature, which I like to imagine in Spinozian terms, although it could also be formulated in many other ways.

The only thing that matters is that it doesn't matter what we think we are, but what we really do.

The rest is nothing more than a long shawl that threatens to entangle itself in the wheels of the convertible of our narcissism.

I was thinking about these things when my son finished explaining to me that, during the siege of the city of Sancerre, some Catholics ate some Protestants.

Or was it some Protestants who ate some Catholics?

I do not know.

The only thing I know is that my son is right when he is wrong.

Not remembering it is the best way to remember it, because although they thought they were different, deep down they turned out to be the same.

Will the children of the future confuse us?

Yes, if we continue to melt into the embrace of those who struggle to strangle each other.

Not if we build our identity on the ethical effort to oppose truthfulness, friendship and justice to lies, hatred and selfishness.

To me, that's the only history test we're interested in not failing.

Bernat Castany Prado

is a philosopher and professor at the University of Barcelona.

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