While Life Slips Away
HAVANA TIMES – Today I remembered a friend who emigrated for political reasons. He’s been living in Spain for years.
We have a mutual friend, but their bond was much deeper. So I was deeply puzzled to learn that, once outside of Cuba, he said he believed she was collaborating with State Security and blocked her on social media.
In a dysfunctional environment that cultivates paranoia, anyone can seem like an accomplice of the enemy.
Everything feels so strange, I think, when I see an update from my friend on Facebook and take a screenshot to share it with her. In this tormented world, it must be said, genuine friendship is a privilege.
She’s always glad to hear news about him. And I feel caught in the middle of an additional, artificial, and absurd distance.
We live in societies marked by division and distrust.
Lately, perhaps due to the burden of hardship, political debates give me the sensation of spinning on a carousel.
The exhaustion from blackouts, outrageous prices, and that surreal inertia that keeps survival going in Cuba (always on the edge of the abyss) seems on the verge of collapse.
Deep down, excluding very selfish or wicked people, we all want the same things. Peace, the freedom to prosper, to express ourselves and to associate. To create and develop projects—economic, artistic, scientific, environmental… To walk the streets (clean ones) of a developing country. To contribute to and belong to that stretch of land where you live, whether you were born there or not.
I understand that opinions are inevitable, and that one can get swept away by the political fervor of the moment. But life imposes such harsh challenges… At least in Cuba, almost all of us share the same sadness and the same weariness.
We’re constantly losing people who leave, swallowed by distance and their own personal paths, shifting interests.
I’ve lost count of how many Facebook followers and acquaintances have distanced themselves from me just for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza.
October 7, 2023, split the world in two, and the larger piece (as usual) stood with power. With those who drop bombs even on hospitals. With those who are exterminating an entire people.
There was a time when I believed that anyone who spoke up for individual and collective freedom was a defender of truth. Big mistake. Most people react against a form of injustice only when it directly affects them. The rest get buried in comfortable relativism.
With the Trump administration, the line dividing humanity seems to have grown even more solid. But it’s not about left or right. It’s about what is right versus what is wrong. As it has been for millennia.
We Cubans often sin in our naivety. Many still believe communism is the only evil on this earth. Anything that doesn’t carry that label must be good. It doesn’t matter if it’s a discourse full of empty promises, hysteria, or incompetence, like the ones that condemned this Island. It doesn’t matter if it stirs up division, an exaggerated nationalism with no clear direction or practical application. It doesn’t matter if it carries the energy of hatred and destroys the dreams that, in the most secret corners of our hearts, we still share.
I admire animals because they take offense so lightly. I see it all the time in my cats. They don’t hold grudges. One moment they’re angrily attacking each other, and the next they’re hugging, grooming one another.
Of course, they lack the perverse sophistication of the human intellect, which poses a real danger. But at least among friends, we could step outside of these power struggles that inevitably shape our destinies, and help each other however we can, while we still inhabit these bodies doomed to leave, who knows when.
People today have largely lost the ability to argue constructively and effectively, and to leave disagreements behind once the discussion ends. We’ve lost the maturity to “agree to disagree” while still remaining friends and allies across differing views. Education is key to reversing this, yet education itself has been hollowed out – reduced to fostering technological competence at the expense of intellectual reasoning, debate, and critical thought. This is a global phenomenon. While almost everyone today is technologically adept, very few seem able to formulate a coherent argument rooted in sound reasoning, good judgment, and supporting evidence. We have, in many ways, been deliberately dumbed down.
While I could take issue with some of the points in your article, I see no real value in doing so. It is your piece, and you have every right to express yourself as you see fit. I’m intelligent enough to understand that you’re not making a simple statement about Israel, the U.S., communism, or even necessarily Cuba. Rather, you’re expressing a deeper frustration with the loss of people’s ability to reason, to act rationally, and to trust in themselves and others.
The most important sentence you wrote, and the one that best captures the true subject of your article, is this: “We live in societies marked by division and distrust.” That is the reality today, across countries, societies, communities, neighborhoods, and even families.
This mistrust didn’t materialize out of thin air, nor is it mainly driven by business. It has been cultivated by politicians and governments, and reinforced by the so-called higher education establishment. Increasingly, universities seem to be teaching the opposite of what previous generations were taught was good and true, while presenting as unquestionable the very ideas that would once have been met with healthy skepticism. This, too, breeds mistrust and division.
I have often said, “The world is twisted and bent out of shape. It is becoming increasingly absurd.” There needs to be a revolt against today’s dominant ideologies – a return to common decency, mutual trust, and a renewed respect for intellectual thought and reasoned discourse. We must rediscover the ability to respectfully disagree, to debate earnestly, and then – regardless of who “wins” the argument – to shake hands or even embrace one another through mutual respect.
What amazing writing. This article really got to me. Enough to make me weep.