Happiness only real when shared

(Into the Wild)

Pride

°(If you had received an email with this English version be aware that you can find Italian and Spanish translation @ pankh.substack.com)

I try to return to writing here as soon as I can. I fear that my thoughts and outbursts may come across as self-pitying, and I am ashamed of that. I don't want to fall into that trap. Sometimes I need to vent, like the last post I published recently, and I thank you if I can share them here with you, with people I know and others who take the time to read me. Thank you. For me, it is truly therapeutic to let out thoughts that often just keep swirling in my head.

I've been a bit withdrawn these past few months, distancing myself from everything. All my bones creak, just all of them, (have you ever been able to crack your tailbone yourself? for a moment it feels like falling to pieces), I struggle to stand, I often loose my balance, feel unsteady, trip, have muscle spasms, tingling in my extremities, tremors, tinnitus, or changes in sound perception when I move my neck. I try to accept all this as my new normal, but it scares me, and I don't talk about it often. Even my cognitive system is degrading. I read one thing for another, invert letters or words when I write, have tremendous difficulty concentrating, and can't find the words when I speak.

Meanwhile, besides trying not to lose mobility, doing exercises, walking, and not overdoing it, I study the blood type diet. Apparently, some foods are not recommended based on your blood type. Although I had already eliminated many of them in my case, others surprised me. But if they can avoid inflammation in my body, well, I'm tryingan will try, everything to achieve a better quality of life.

Anyway, there are so many things to talk about, and I don't want to be fixated only on my subjective condition. We live in intense times, and we are all in the same boat in a full storm, so caught up in ourselves that we often forget about others. It happens to me too.

I would like to be more present with absent friends, those I haven't spoken to in a long time, with strangers I will never meet.

Pain is part of life; each of us encounters it in some form. I don't have a spiritual or religious vision about it. I don't believe life is fair or unfair; I think it's entirely random. Each of us has our own hell or struggle to face, and we do it as best we can. So there are no faults or guilty parties. Our shortcomings and sufferings allow us to perceive an equality that should lead us to be more compassionate with one another. It should allow us to be more united and help each other. Instead, we often find ourselves entrenched in our individuality and our own lives.

It's strange to think that in the era of digital sharing, we have stopped sharing content and have mostly become the content within digital containers. How boring.

(Every now and then, the University of Barcelona includes me in its studies on chronic pain. The latest research was based on the assumption that those who believe in God and an afterlife manage and accept pain better. I can even see the point of view, but screw that... ‘Vaffanculo‘, there you go!).

I have always thought in plural terms. I grew up in the generation where the world became global. I cannot aspire to my well-being without that of others. Everything is so interconnected that the flutter of a butterfly's wings can bring down a tree in the Amazon. I can only aspire to abundance, freedom, peace, security, dignity, and equality for all. Damn, it sounds very much like guillotine :)).

It reminds me of a book by Tiqqun that I found in Gijón years ago: the collective subject is not "we" but must become the "I" as a collective consciousness. We are all one. Here all their publications.

I was talking recently to a good friend Trivigante, very nice travel stories and perspectives in Italian, who just returned from Libya (which has only recently opened its borders after all the post-Gaddafi chaos). He is interested in seeing difficult situations with his own eyes to understand the world's affairs. We talked about the state of mind when human beings are deprived of a sense of security and have to face fear for their safety and livelihood every day. This must put the human being in a state of constant alert, dazed by terror at every moment. People living in states where war and injustice are so strong that they paralyze, react, endure, surrender, attack—a primordial state, awakening the sense of survival, almost animal. In that state, everything changes in value.

I have very few friends who have tried to live in a war situation. Heidegger wanted to experience war to understand what a human being is. It didn't go very well for him; they rejected him and then barely used him. Meanwhile, he became increasingly close to Protestantism, militarism, and German anti-Semitism. In short, not a gem. One night in Barcelona, I chatted with an African man. I immediately understood that he had experienced these things firsthand, that he had been a soldier, that he had seen and done things. He bore the scars on his face, and I had great respect for him. We recognized and respected each other with our eyes and few words.

I think about the people in Gaza every day and in many other parts of the world. We don't even realize that the world is in constant war. We don't care much since we can't do anything about it, at least until it affects our interests and security. Meanwhile, war remains one of the primary economies in our history. Living in fear must be hell.

• Ukraine Russo-Ukrainian War

• Palestine Israel-Palestine War

• Myanmar Civil War

• Sudan Civil War

• Ethiopia Civil War

• Nigeria Terrorist Insurgency

• Burkina Faso Terrorist Insurgency

• Mexico Drug War

• Syria Civil War

• Mali Terrorist Insurgency

• DR Congo Terrorist Insurgency

• Russia Russo-Ukrainian War

• Pakistan Afghanistan-Pakistan Border Conflict

• Yemen Civil War

• Cameroon Terrorist Insurgency

• Niger Terrorist Insurgency

• Colombia Civil War/Drug War

• Haiti Civil War/Gang War

• Afghanistan Civil War/Terrorist Insurgency

• South Sudan Ethnic violence

• Iraq Terrorist Insurgency/Political Unrest

• Central African Republic Civil War

• Mozambique Civil War

• Chad Terrorist Insurgency

• Bangladesh Civil War

• Benin Terrorist Insurgency

• Libya Terrorist Insurgency

• Uganda Terrorist Insurgency

• Togo Terrorist Insurgency

• Ecuador Civil War

• Israel Isolombia Civil War/Drug War

  Harael-Palestine War

• Ghana Terrorist Insurgency

• Algeria Terrorist Insurgency

• Morocco Terrorist Insurgency

• Tanzania Terrorist Insurgency

• Ivory Coast Terrorist Insurgency

• Mauritania Terrorist Insurgency

• Tunisia Terrorist Insurgency

Source: World Population Review

These are the countries where there are currently armed conflicts. To be honest, we should always keep this very present, but many of these conflicts are not even talked about. The media are instruments of mass control, and our governments often profit from these situations. GDP always rises with the sale of arms. The word "soldo" aka money comes from "soldier"; war has been the world's first economy (there was also "salary," which comes from the salt trade). The city where I was born has known this since always; we have been producing weapons since the Middle Ages. We received an extraordinary order for arms from Spain in 1492. What a coincidence; who knows what the Spanish crown needed so many weapons for starting in 1492?¿!

Connecting the dots is sometimes difficult, but everything can be read between the lines. It seems I'm only stating the obvious, sorry, but I just can't understand or accept that, given the future that awaits us, which is becoming clearer and more evident to everyone, our fortunes have always been secured by violence in history. We have built well-being on the backs of others for centuries, and we don't care because it is our due. We are civilized nations that have always destroyed all those we encountered on our path. And what awaits us: a future of food crises, climate crises, economic crises. How is it that we are only paralyzed, pretend nothing is happening, and are only concerned with our small world that excludes the other or the common good? We only seek to anesthetize ourselves in the flow of a constant, happy present, but it is more fragile than it seems, I assure you.

There is no longer a politics adequate to our times. We have all the possibilities, but we, the privileged, do not want to lose our miserable securities. We are inundated with information and notions of all kinds, and due to overload, we remain petrified in our fragile well-being in our miserable little garden. What always remains protected is Capital, a textbook perfect psychopath.

We have become accustomed to always having to choose the lesser evil in political elections. Politics itself no longer has an ideology; it plays at balancing between ideas, hatred, and consensus instead of practicing politics rooted in the word choice and solidarity as a disruptive value.

Everything is political, every one of our daily actions, from the toothpaste we use to the products we consume, the lifestyles we aspire to, the job we do. And we have become the product of the economy; capital remains the psychopathic subject working against the dignity and security of humankind.

Practically speaking, what is the point of making us responsible and making us do separate waste collection when our bathrooms and kitchens are full of plastic containers? Fortunately, there are already many people and local options that refill many of the products we use. When I enter a bathroom in any house, it pains me to see the dozens of little bottles and things for our personal hygiene and beauty. Has anyone ever wondered how many thousands of these things we have thrown away in a lifetime? And we don't give up any of these conveniences if we can help it.

Personally, for 30 years, I have only used Aleppo soap, body, shampoo and shaving, one of the oldest in the world, which they already made in the time of Alexander the Great. In recent years, unfortunately, they cover it with a plastic sheet, but it lasts me two to three months. Poor Aleppo, who knows if they still produce it there. For just as many years, I have tried to use only an old razor that my father gave me with a steel blade or the old folding razor. In short, you have to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning, be present, it requires practice and attention, lightness because otherwise, you always pay with blood. I use it as a metaphor to bring myself into the present; I can't stand disposable razors and all the plastic blades... (nothing against the machines if they last for years). Real politics would be to obligate the elimination of plastic by law, except for uses where it is indispensable for the safety of a production system. It's not valid if it's only to optimize profit; the alternatives exist. Now they may not be economical, but if they were implemented on an economic scale, prices would drop. How is it that we are responsible for doing separate waste collection, and companies are not responsible for the products they put into circulation?

By the way, did you know that the largest human-made structure visible from space is made precisely of plastic?

The sea of plastic, Greenhouses - Almeria, Spain

How is it that political action for the common good does not get underway, and we are always only passive subjects? Because profit is worth more than people; for me, it remains a senseless thing.

Economy, from the Latin oeconomĭa, and the Greek οἰκονομία, compound of οἶκος «dwelling» and -νομία «-nomia» (properly «household management»), is a science based on the balancing of profits and losses. They have distorted even the meaning of a science; I don't see why profit must always increase infinitely, even at the expense of future generations. The purpose of the economy is balance.

One must be careful with choices; each of them is a political action. Even in a supermarket.

(Here some random thoughts)

As always, I leave you with a new playlist, which is always best listened to in shuffle mode: 25.5