Other cancellations and joy
07
Nov
Not only are there cancellations of identities
and ethnicities, there are also cancellations aimed at policies that eliminate fraternity, solidarity and love.
Edgar Morin wrote about “salvation”: “Life, consciousness, love, truth and beauty are ephemeral. These marvelous emergencies presuppose organizations of organizations, unusual opportunities, and they run mortal risks all the time. For us, they are fundamental, but they have no foundation” (Morin, 2003, p. 164).
This type of cancellation is not only the most dangerous, it is itself a cancellation of the possibility of good news: “Love and conscience will die. Nothing will escape death. There is no salvation in the sense of the religions of salvation that promise personal immortality. There is no earthly salvation, as promised by the communist religion, that is, a social solution in which everyone’s life would be free from misfortune, chance and tragedy. This salvation must be radically and definitively renounced” (Morin, 2003, p. 164).
Morin quotes another author who is fundamental to his argument: “As Gadamer says, it is necessary to ‘stop thinking of finitude as the limitation in which our infinite will-to-be fails, (but) to know finitude positively as the true fundamental law of dasein’. The true infinite is beyond reason of intelligibility, of the powers of man” (Morin, 2003, p. 164).
How is this beyond finitude can be written according to the author: “The gospel of lost men and the Fatherland tells us: let us be brothers, not because we will be saved, but because we are lost*. Let us be brothers in order to live authentically our community of earthly life and death destiny. Let us be brothers, because we are in solidarity with each other in the unknown adventure” (Morin, 2003, p. 166), and explains in a footnote (*):
*In fact, the idea of salvation born of the refusal of perdition carried within it the repressed awareness of perdition. Every religion of life after death carried within it the repressed awareness of the irreparability of death.
He quotes Albert Cohen to explain: “That this astonishing adventure of humans who arrive, laugh, move, then suddenly stop moving, that this catastrophe that awaits them does not make us tender and compassionate towards one another, this is unbelievable” (Cohen, apud Morin, 2003, pgs. 166-167).
This is his call for fraternity: “The call for fraternity is not confined to one race, one class, one elite, one nation. It comes from those who, wherever they are, hear it within themselves, and it is addressed to each and every one. Everywhere, in every class, in every nation, there are beings of ‘good will’ who convey this message” (Morin, 2003, p. 167).
MORIN, E. e Kern, Anne-Brigitte. Terra-Pátria, trad. por Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. — Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2003.
