I don’t go to the country just to stretch my legs, but to also escape the commotion so characteristic of human relationships. I go to revel in moments of divine silence, which is difficult to obtain if you’re not accompanied by people of the same passion.
Today is Wednesday, May 27, and I have finally received the much-awaited sentence from my trial. It stated that I was without grounds in my lawsuit against the University for dismissing me as a college professor.
While several of the current directions in philosophy excite me, the one I know somewhat better is Radical Constructionism. I developed a short course in which I included cognitive, theoretical, biological and practical tools employed in an integral and progressive way in the construction of reality.
The first thing that struck me in that text was the question of anonymity. It seems that a very serious demand is being made on these little kids, a demand that someone determined they could make on someone else’s children without first asking their parents.
The exercise of philosophy will never free us from responsibility; to the contrary, it pushes us toward the bitter and distressing taste of recognizing the profound implication of all our acts. It is a form of happiness, but at the same time a kick in the balls: a pain like no other.
At the time, I decided to wait until the teachers were called to reanalyze the study program. I was hopeful that the struggle could be carried out from the inside. How naïve I was, such a moment never came and as I see it, never will.
One of the most interesting aspects about philosophy is that it must be rediscovered by each person who is interested in it. The educator cannot teach the answers, because then we would not be in the presence of an emancipatory knowledge, of a philosophy.
If such a monster had been created in the US, the article would have been twice the length. The story would have launched a broadside against the craft’s role in ecological destruction, the arms race, resource depletion, and the millions of dead caused by American aggressions.
When I was boy in the Reparto Eléctrico —a neighborhood on the outskirts of Havana, and where I continue to live today— seemed like a veritable jungle. The concerts of frogs and crickets in the silence of the night made you feel far removed from all civilization.
Although I’m the first to applaud the achievements of this form of so-called socialism, every day I fear that the system -where it’s impossible to buy a decent pair of shoes on your monthly salary- is becoming unsustainable.