The Deceptive Reality
By Eduardo N. Cordovi Hernandez
HAVANA TIMES – A few years ago, I ran into Alfonso, a former classmate. Back then, there weren’t as many flirtations with state capitalism as there are now. After graduating as construction technicians, we worked at the same company until I left, although I remained in the construction field.
We talked about various issues regarding the dynamics of life. About some who had left the country and the reasons why many people leave Cuba, to which I had no choice but to philosophize. I could scratch my head or pat him on the back, but I chose to philosophize. I prefer it that way.
I told him they had left the country because they preferred capitalism (he agreed). Then I said it was foolish to leave the country for that reason; that’s when our discussion began.
“But how?!” he said, “here all we have is socialism.”
I told him that this world is an illusion. (He opened his eyes).
“Are you saying that Cuba’s socialism is false?”
“I don’t know. It’s about this world, whether in Cuba or Miami: reality is false. At least what we call reality!”
“I don’t understand.”
“Everything is a lie. Everything you see is false. The truth is something else.”
“I don’t believe it. Prove it!”
“For example, you live in one world. I live in another.”
“Come on!”
“Yes! You live in socialism and I in capitalism. The others had to leave for that. Now they’re there, longing to be here, and I’m here living with an economic structure like theirs. The difference is that they are either in this world or in that one. But I live in both at the same time.”
“How do you live in both?”
“I do. I left my state job. Now I live on my own, I’m a craftsman. I am my own company, my own boss. My means of production are capitalist.”
“Let me see if I understand! The fact that you left, without really leaving, means you prefer capitalism?”
“If that were the case, I would have truly left; but I’m here. It’s the middle ground, not the extremes. That’s why I’m in both at the same time.”
“Well, I accept that, in a certain subtle way, you’re right. But how do you prove that the world is unreal?”
“One day I went to visit one of the construction sites where I worked. There were problems with a staircase that I had designed. The carpenters, who weren’t really carpenters, didn’t know how to lay out the staircase. That alone is proof of the falseness of the world we live in! I took off my shirt and felt fulfilled as I showed them how it’s done. I truly felt important, felt like I was really earning the money I always got for just going around, chatting, and repeating typical, classic, schematic directives.
“The next day, I went to see the staircase already cast in concrete. What do you think I saw? Nothing less than: another staircase! What happened here? I asked. Well, the company director or the boss – I don’t know which – liked the staircase better in another spot. Days later, they came to the office for me to make an annex, to request more materials. The ones sent according to my initial project weren’t enough. I refused, and I was nearly killed: ‘You’re the technician for that project and you can’t neglect it…!’
“What do you think? That was the job I was the technician for. The bosses can violate my project and increase the budget of the project, and in the midst of construction, they can alter the executions that, as a technician, I guide. The reality is that the technician is someone else, not me. I’m just a decorative figure, an unreal being who gets paid for doing nothing, all bluff, a Chinese tale… It’s not real life, it’s a comedy.”
“But you could have asserted your authority, your responsibility. Asking for a leave was cowardly, avoiding the truth, not facing your reality…”
“Whatever you say… but my reality as a technician didn’t exist. The real confrontation with ‘what is not, is not being,’ and I left, to truly ‘not be.’ Judge me and condemn me. This world is macabre because it doesn’t exist, it’s based on what is not, it’s based ‘on what some believe it should be.’ It’s not about social systems, it’s about the world. In Miami and anywhere else, it’s the same, with its natural differences. Now my reality is: the more I produce, the more I earn. My work has a reality that I can feel, I create objects that are there, and although I earn less, I’m real and I have more free time.”
“But you had enough time and were earning more! You were foolish to leave your job, you could have taken advantage.”
“To become an accomplice to the game of carpenters who aren’t carpenters, of technicians getting paid without working, of directors who are technicians, budgeters, and everything all at once?
“You’re also an accomplice, without trying to change it.”
“Isn’t that movie ‘Tarzan against the world’? Do you want the diabolical machinery to devour me. This world will always be like this. Read history. We can only try to understand it, to leave the game, and enjoy the show.”
“I think that’s a passive attitude.”
“I would say balanced.”
“And I would say serene.”
“It’s slow but not motionless. For you, movement is the great speed! Remember, you don’t see the trees grow, yet ‘they still move.’ And that means a lot of things.”