[TLDR (too long didn’t read): This Reader is about the art of writing, my motivations and tribulations when I write them. (I do this about every fifty Readers) You will notice, here more than elsewhere, that I profusely quote or paraphrase from all the good and wise I have scavenged from others over time; I just put it all together to make it flow. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
-If the singer goes silent, life becomes silent. (E.C. Rodriguez)
-If and when I find a thread pointing towards human rights (HR), I cannot resist the temptation to pull on it.
Preamble
1. In December 1929, Antonio Gramsci wrote in the prison to which he had been confined by Italian fascism: “Do not think that I feel defeated. Far from it. A person who is strongly convinced of his moral strength, of his energy and will, and of the necessary coherence between ends and means, never allows himself to be depressed by banal moods of optimism or pessimism. My state of mind is a synthesis of these two feelings and transcends them: my reason is pessimistic, but my will is optimistic. Whatever the situation, I imagine the worst that can happen and that is what mobilizes all my will and energy reserves to prevent it from happening and to overcome any obstacle“.
2. In the footsteps of Gramsci, and as a de-professionalized and politicized intellectual, I have decided to be a provocateur rather than a revolutionary. (Gustavo Esteva; Juan Carlos Etcheverry) In doing so, in the Readers, I only take in my hands the torch that was lit by those who before us fought for the people and with the people. (Salvador Allende).
3. You see? When the years add up, one begins to have a notion that time is slipping away and that is why relevant writing can be a way of slowing down time; but, of course, my writing does not slow it down; nothing and no one is capable of holding back time. (Mario Benedetti) I have many Readers in the pipeline waiting to see the light –not letting time slip by…
4. For me, words have the gift of shedding light on dark alleys. So, words you read from me have serious meaning. (Carla Guelfenbein) The Readers actually attempt to connect the concrete with the general in the political debate of HR. [I cannot but wonder though: in the Readers, am I depicting ‘a reality’ of what the world is not?* (Albino Gomez)]. This reminds me of Vladimir Volkoff, the French writer (1932-2005) who strongly and brilliantly advocated for the freedom of ideas and denounced certain ‘correct thinking’ as ‘cowardly thinking’, namely, a way of always being with- and in- the center, but hiding what one really believes-in or thinks. …was he right?**
*Only in literature is a confusion between reality and fiction accepted. (Roberto Ampuero)
**: Aristotle, in a phrase from his Nicomachean Ethics, says: “He who exceeds in daring is called bold, but he who exceeds in fear and fails in daring, is called a coward”. In the Readers, I prefer to be ‘bold’ rather than ‘cowardly’. And I assume responsibility for this decision. It is what in soccer is called defending by attacking so that, if there was a literary police, would my security be in danger? (Dina Grijalva) I hope not.
Challenges I face
–The limits imposed on me by my intelligence are narrow, but the matters I feel I must cover are infinite. (Franz Kafka).
—I rather present you with questions that cannot be answered than with answers that cannot be questioned. (Richard Feynman)
5. Every week, I have about sixty seconds to get your attention***; content only matters later. If I do not sell my pitch to you in one minute I feel I have exhausted most of your patience. Good ideas are easy to pitch; it is bad ideas that are hard to pitch. I compete with your phone since it offers infinite competition for your dopamine. So, whenever I pitch an idea in the fewest words possible, I win. If you read something from me, and think ‘someone has already written about that’ justremember: there are 1,010 published biographies of Winston Churchill.
***: In the first paragraph I have to try to define everything: structure, tone, style, rhythm, length –and sometimes even character. The rest is the pleasure of writing (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) because, as Voltaire said, writing is the painting of the voice.
6. A powerful trick is presenting to you something you intuitively know, but have not yourself yet put into words. To win, I try to present the best story line, not necessarily the best idea, or the right answer, or the most useful solution. Just a story persuasively told. No reader wants a lecture. Everyone wants a story. It makes everything easier to remember and contextualize. (Morgan Housel)
7. In a world like today’s, I have to have an entertaining story line, without which there are no readers. The writer who does not captivate the reader is a dead writer. For this, it is crucial for me to cut out the superfluous and irrelevant and add the ingredients to enrich the attraction of the story. What better for you the reader than to have an uncontaminated witness account?(Jose Luis Rosasco) …which I am afraid I am not always giving you; I do have my biases.
8. In the Readers, I have been speaking to you, I hope, with reason, telling you a historically relevant story that is very clear about what power has always meant, i.e., what money has been and is doing as the pragmatic and constant version of power. (Leonardo Padura, The Transparency of Time). Although they may be abstract, the ideas that I present in the Readers give you a different vision of the world, a new way of feeling the everyday. This does not pretend to be revolutionary, but rather, presents novel testimonies that do not point towards a hopeless struggle, but rather point towards a rebellion against our own conceptions of society, politics, religion… so often alienating us.
9. The Readers denounce the repressors of freedom, reveal the intimate and absurd disorder of the world –neither optimistically nor pessimistically but, very often, ambiguously especially in the face of complex social dilemmas; they examine the yes and the no of all things and present to you the intimate restlessness of our time in general and mine in particular. (Francesc L. Cardona)
10. How insatiable and abrasive the vice of writing is. The same iron rigor needed to start a new Reader is necessary to finish it, because it has no beginning or end: it either clicks or it does not –and if it does not click, it is healthier to start it over again. (G. Garcia Marquez)
11. Finally here, I have long been adept at writing the killer line that stops you in your tracks and makes you pay attention. (Stuart Gillespie) These one-liners can be found as the titles scattered throughout the many Readers (700…). [You can see many of them bolded and in CAPS in the Readers website www.claudioschuftan.com].
A relevant aside: Human rights violations never die or disappears for good
— I could say that, because of this, I am in constant mourning for the victims. But I do not cry. It is a thousand times worse: I have rage, impotence, anger. And trying to understand, I write… (Soledad Araya M.)
12. I have been called a-chronicler-of-the-troubled under the impact of HR violations and their daily toll of deaths: …to much honor. For me, what it is about, is to bear witness in favor of those troubled people so that some more attention is shed/focused on the injustice and outrage done them. I thus stand by my mantra: No longer are there individual destinies, only a collective destiny. The tale I set out to tell is not one of a final victory. It only hints to what has to be done –and be done again– in the never-ending fight against injustice –refusing to bow down. (Albert Camus, The Plague) I will keep writing –even if repeating ideas (from different angles though).
Bottom line
–For me, the HR Readers are like instant coffee: they have the caffeine, but if I want you to have a great morning drink I better take time to brew that cup right. (Gunter Pauli)
13. The senselessness, the quiet senselessness of my/our existence:
- In recent times, I reflect more often on my life, I look for what is decisive and I am not sure I find it.
- I learned very little when I was young, but I have seen and heard a lot since then; I have assimilated tons; my C-drive is rich.
- Should I expect that thanks to raising questions in the Readers everything will become clearer? No, I no longer expect that. I do not have the keys to achieve it without your intervention: I cannot do it without your help.
- I only intend to evoke a reaction, a reply (in the silence of you towards the Readers that mostly surrounds me).
- Occasionally a word or a sentence may reveal to you a hint, evoke an active response that makes you jump. Those are the ones I would love to receive as feedback.
- Do all readers feel the impulse to ask? Do the questions I raise provoke the expected commotion in you? Do you/we choose that sterile existence which we do not like, but that we always successfully hang-on to? Deep down, I am no different from you, in spite of all our differences.
- However, I must congratulate myself for having provoked with my questions at least a certain agitation. In a way, I begin to lay a foundation, even if I do not go any further, but this is already something. At least some light is thrown on the confusion and lies and HR myths are being debunked.
- For this reason, those who ask a lot of questions are my pals; I am interested in those who answer them, those who interrupt with more questions. The important thing is to go beyond the intention. (Franz Kafka, Investigaciones de un Perro).
- We all, therefore, open angles-of-sight to the conscience, to the commitment and, certainly, to the necessary work that leads to a humanizing a re-evolution towards the progressive realization of HR. (Luis Weinstein)
The Readers have taught me nothing new, except that I must fight it out at the side of the claim holders
14. The surest way of playing the game of the HR violators, I think, is not to leave to them the monopoly of the violations. If you give-in once in challenging them, there is good chance and reason you will continue to give-in; it seems to me that history has borne this out. This makes me lose my peace and, through the Readers I am still trying to find it. I thus keep an endless watch lest, due to my many possible oversights, I remain silent towards such violations.
15. Integrity is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good wo/man is the wo/man who has the fewest lapses of indifference towards inequity and inequality –and this demands tremendous willpower. Yes, but so many of us today look so tired. I know that I am not qualified to pass judgment on those others. That is why I feel such desperate weariness. Only connecting with others can we make history. Am I dooming myself to an isolated exile? Maybe. But as things are, I take responsibility to be as and who I am; I have learned modesty though.
16. All I maintain is that, in this world, there are victims and it is up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces-with and condone the oppressors. That may sound simple to the point of childishness. I am not one who says whether it is too simple, but I know it is true. I have come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clean-cut language. So, I resolved always to speak, to write and to act; this is the only way of setting myself on the right track.**** I have no great ambitions in this and the Readers are a drop in the ocean. That is why I decided to take the side of the victims, in every predicament, so as to reduce, and hopefully prevent, the damage being done.
****: “It comes to this”, Tarrou said, “what interests me is learning how to become a saint”. “But you don’t believe in God’, the Dr countered. “Exactly! I can be a saint without God –that is the problem– in fact, the only problem I am up against today”. “Perhaps”, the Dr went on, “but you know I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity do not really appeal to me. What interests me is being a man. Of course, a man should fight for the victims”. (the above excerpted and adapted from Albert Camus’ The Plague) [I may add: but if we cease caring for all that is happening outside the strict realm of HR, what is the use of this fighting in a world with so many other concurrent and interrelated problems?].
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
–It is good for me to think back on sooo many past Readers of whose fate I do not know. But it does not matter. The important thing is to look for the pleasure that writing them gave/gives me without worrying about praise, censure, triumphs or failures.***** The last word does not exist. The new creed is already old. The bold words of these Readers have been said a hundred times before. The pendulum swings; the circle is run over and over again. I shall continue to write moral and political fables for my own amusement. (Does this represent the righteousness of a fanatic and/or the ferocity of an apostle?) (Adapted from Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence)
****: Do I write the Readers for oblivion? In the end nobody will remember anything? (R. Ampuero) When my peers say they do not care what others think of them, they are fooling themselves. The desire for the applause of others is perhaps a powerful instinct. For me, a political sense is indispensable to fight moral apathy. In contemplating evil, sincerity, not applause, obliges me to disapprove of certain actions, as well as to find out their causes. I wonder, am I more interested in knowing than in judging…?
–We get hot about the topics we care for, we motivate ourselves, we express outrage, we write documents (Readers…), we clarify our position supporting the wretched of the earth …and in the end? …The facts are shaped in the future through the interests of the you-know-who and we go back to: We get hot, we motivate ourselves, we express outrage, we write documents, we clarify our position supporting the wretched of the earth… Am I depressed? Or am I realistic?