If public speeches could be measured like the wind, it would be the height of tornado season.
Political messages roar like wildfire to stun the opponent and exacerbate differences.
When debating, the leaders trigger their disparity in criteria: newly spoken words float like smoking revolvers.
Who would have thought that a few years ago we seemed placidly headed towards the boring end of history and hysteria.
In a short time, the verbal habitat has become more disjunctive —and less and less relaxed—, while thunder drowns out any possibility of listening.
Dramatizing, of course, is entertaining and photogenic.
Ortega y Gasset said that speaking is equivalent to exaggerating;
when we struggle to be right, we force ourselves to exacerbate our ideas, dislocate and schematize them.
In the age of anger, we are hyperbolic and we enjoy it.
The problem worsens when understanding begins to discredit.
The opposing parties can reach agreements, but ensuring that nobody catches them
red
-handed
.
And there they come into contradiction with the essential gears of democracy, which consists of negotiating with those who do not think like you, in a possible give and take.
The historian Thucydides, a witness to the rise and fall of Athenian democracy, wrote that societies are breaking down—unknowingly—when they ridicule moderation as a disguise for cowardice.
For Aristotle, wisdom consisted in finding a balanced term between inaction and overacting.
He warned that holding that position is hard, because you are lashed out from two fronts and you are in the center of crossfire.
The wingers always attack the middle, throwing it to the opposite flank.
For this reason, the philosopher suggested stopping to reflect and counteracting our biases: "We must take into consideration the things to which we are most inclined and pull ourselves in the opposite direction as those who want to straighten beams do."
It is an arduous but extremely healthy task.
Even if two worldviews are night and day, they may have more in common than we imagine.
The Spanish adjective “white”, like the French and Catalan “
blanc
” and the Portuguese or Galician “
branco
”, share, as surprising as it may seem, a root with the English “
black
”, that is, black.
All these words descend from a term that meant “without color”.
In the north, colors fade in darkness or under gray skies: thus, it meant darkness.
In the south, the blinding sun shine washes out the hues, and hence clarity.
Even the furthest branches have shared roots.
Spurred on by dualistic slogans, we ignore coincidences and proximities.
The Persian prophet Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, stated that the world faces a constant struggle between good and evil.
Therefore, whoever contradicts me does not do so for valid reasons but immoral ones;
he is not someone who thinks differently, but the ambassador of evil, and it is logical to hate him.
As the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska wrote from the vantage point of a convulsive history: “See how active hatred is and how well it is preserved.
How lightly he clears obstacles and how easy it is for him to jump on his prey.
Since when does the fraternity draw crowds?
Has compassion ever reached the goal first?
How many volunteers does doubt seduce?
Hate does seduce, and how! It's an old dog.
Life often goes off the rails predictable, and, in the face of its complexity and uncertainties, we are relieved by these unqualified statements.
Manichean discourses prop up certainties by reducing reality to two categories, one of which promises to shelter us: truth or lie, civilization or barbarism, success or failure, with me or against me.
Saint Augustine, a Manichaean for almost a decade, recognized in his
Confessions
by him the appeal of this simplifying gaze: the eternal struggle of two principles, one good, symbolized by light, and the other evil, symbolized by darkness.
Almost always, the division is fallacious;
and the nuances, more revealing.
Let's not let them manipulate us with Mani's legacy.
White and
black
are brothers, and colorín colorado.
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