Human rights: Food for a dedicated writer’s thought
HRR 800
[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 recap 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 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
1. This particular Reader celebrates 3000+ pages of activism in the last 18+ years. Although the Readers are compiled by me, I mostly do acknowledge my sources –bearing in mind that much of what you find in the Readers is not original; it has often been quoted from references irretrievably lost to me.
2. Note: I have often been criticized about not using scholarly citations (references) in the Readers. But, to me, citations are frozen footprints in the landscape of (often apolitical) scholarly achievement in an attempt to synchronize with already existing knowledge in the prevailing paradigm. (Blaise Cronin) Many believe that any successful effort to make ideas accessible, lively, intelligent and interesting is a manifestation of deficient scholarship. This is the fortress behind which I regularly find refuge though. (J.K. Galbraith) To be popular, one must be mediocre, Oscar Wilde claimed. And Winston Churchill defined success as the ability to move from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
My relationship with the Readers
—I am very much aware there is a difference between making a point vs making a change. (Iain Levine)
—It sometimes feels to me like scholars attend firefighters’ conferences and no one is allowed to speak about water. (Rutger Bregman)
3. The Readers are actually my alter ego and I purport I come to them from the University-of-Real-Down-to-Earth. This, because I consistently try to fight the thenocentrism hidden in me through my Western upbringing and through my views of the world –especially when so many of us pat ourselves in the back for our cosmopolitanism.
4. In the Readers, I show my self-portait to the world in the hope that you, its readers, will appreciate that. Actually, through the Readers, I over-and-over clarify my own political identity in my own mind, i.e., keeping separate what my origins dictate and what my dreams and my hates are.
5. Although I do adhere to an ideology, I do not have a program for humanity; I am a storyteller, a witness, an anthropologist –and I do consider myself a scientist.* What I can contribute to the understanding of the world, and in particular to its geopolitics, essentially comes from my professional background as a socially conscious public health physician. Science, politics and ethics are all mutually implicated in all I do. (Emmanuel Todd and Michael O’Shaughnessy) My positions are not always based on a fundamental ideology of dissent, but come from an attitude of critically reading each situation. [I often forget how recent it has been that a shift occurred where I no longer am called a ‘radical’].
*: …and I do have an aversion to pretend. (Lillian Hellman)
6. As a first step, it is crucial for me to read reality right!** This means that I move away from any apolitical interpretation or implementation of the current human rights (HR) discourse. As a pragmatist, in the Readers, I insist that we all (you included) need catalytic converters for our exhausted minds. (Albino Gomez)
**: The Readers sometimes distract me from sorrowful matters (thus giving me the consolation of forgetting). But they still allow me to listen and observe attentively thus giving me the opportunity to open the depths of understanding of what is going on. Actually, it is my training as a doctor that makes me take the ethical decision of forgetting certain things, as painful as they may be.
7. I often wonder if I should repress nostalgia*** instead of venting it. That is, not to either get-too-soft or to-preach-rudeness (or to use cynical assertions) so as to sound morally legitimate. I define myself as someone who pretends to be a decent person. So, please, do not take me only as a dreamer-of-a-more-just-society. I do not err on the side of naiveté, but often pose as a hard-liner and imitate those lonely, private detective or investigative journalist types.
***: Nostalgia is perhaps a petty-bourgeois vice. This is why the Readers are not nostalgic. (What can those rendered poor feel nostalgic-about with the life they have and have had? What is it to take solace in what will never be, something that makes them lose hope?).
8. Sometimes, as I still believed in values like social justice and HR, I feel deranged and maddened by the ethical canons some fellow opinion leaders apply. It is that cynicism has become a way of life where these leaders are not saying what they really think. I have learned to look beyond their words (for they have lost their value) and instead decided to devote my efforts to work for the true fulfilment of HR. [Too many academics**** speak in vain. Their diatribes sound like meaningless noise. For they are nothing but a colonial factory forced to work and give its harvest and its fruit to/for the prevailing paradigm. This pushes me to bring up all my creative energies as a perennial critic. (Leonardo Padura, Personas Decentes)
****: The worst thing for the conscience of quite a few of these academics is that, despite their considering many of their positions criticizeable, they somehow find the way to justify them. I think that the political blindness and deafness of many an academic responds to the simple fact that they see their function to be within the prevailing paradigm —sometimes only to subsist, and for this they are forced to dispense with certain moral principles –or all of them. (L. Padura) And, by the way, academic conferences serve as a de-facto substitute for action, wouldn’t you agree?
9. To wrap up here: I do not know if this happens to you, but I am no longer sure whether anything I have ever written was truly my own property, or whether my thoughts were merely a common part of the world’s store of ideas that had always existed ready-made and that people like me only borrow. (Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere)
My relationship with words
—A reflection: If I do not write the Readers for them to be read, why pile up so many words? I do know though that words, even if nobody reads them, have value, but this is not enough. My conscience, with which I try to put myself at peace by writing the Readers, tries to give meaning and value to words (and concepts) that perhaps some of you will retain as you read them. (L. Padura, op cit)
—Words that can easily be said, but less easily written, can create (a utopic) social reality, but without actions nothing will change.
–I try to be succinct and to-the point: If a word (or idea) has two syllables, but can be said in one, I go for it.
10. “Words”, John Maynard Keynes once wrote, “ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking”. That has also always been my attitude towards what I would call opinion writing. The Readers are and should be controversial, rubbing some of you the wrong way, because the main point is to get you to rethink your assumptions. I used to say, only half-jokingly, that if a Reader did not generate a large amount of hate mail, that meant that I had wasted the space.
11. Yet what I feel during the years of this weekly writing exercise is that blandness, i.e., avoiding saying anything directly, in a way that might get some people (particularly on the Right) worked-up is useless. I guess my question is, if avoiding is part of the ground rules, why even bother sharing with you my opinions? Maybe there was a short time when my Readers would have been taken as sober and dull opinion pieces. But in today’s wide-open information (and misinformation) environment, boring writing with boring words just vanishes without a trace. (Adapted from Paul Krugman in his essay on why he left the New York Times, January 2025)
12. Finally, words have no hardness, no whiteness, no color; they have only one thing: words… (Siddartha, Herman Hesse)
Now about you…
Talking about the importance of reading
—Reading makes people better active citizens.
13. Mexican writer Paloma Saiz Tejero of the Brigade to Read in Freedom (Brigada Para Leer en Libertad), told us: A people who read are a people who build critical thinking; they are promoters of eutopias, i.e., of an ideal, perfect society. A people who know their history and take ownership of it will feel proud of their roots. Reading socializes; it shares experiences and information.
14. Books (…and Readers?) allow us to understand the reason that our history has made and makes us. Reading makes our consciousness grow beyond the space and time that brings us into being, i.e., our past and present. Thanks to reading, we learn to believe in the impossible, to distrust the obvious, to demand our rights as citizens, and to fulfil our obligations. Reading influences our personal and social development. Without it, no society can progress.
15. It is said that if you do not read attentively, you cannot really talk about what you read (…have you been reading attentively this far?). This, since it is very difficult to pass, in one sole step, from reading an innovative idea to becoming a convert …and convert others.***** (A. Gomez)
*****: Anton Chekhov complained about how unfortunate it is that there are not everywhere people who are capable and eager to maintain an interesting and intelligent conversation; not even intellectuals. It is true that we have books (…and Readers), but they are very different from conversation and face-to-face interaction. Readers can thus be the score, and conversation the singing. (Anton Chekhov, Ward Number Six)
The Readers’ motto: The future must be named before it can be created (Benjamin Barber)
–If my Readers are to tell something of importance, they must be read by somebody else besides me; only then can it be proven that they are not merely my disguised diary and that they are capable of living their own life, independent of me who writes them. (M. Kundera, op cit)
16. The great thing about a blog project (the Readers are blogs) is that I learn a lot researching as I write them. I further learn additional things when trying to communicate my ideas…and then I learn even more when trying to answer the thorny questions that come my way –in real time, under a spotlight, with nowhere to hide. (Stuart Gillespie)
17. The Readers abide by what Amit Sengupta, one of my comrades at the People’s Health Movement and a pioneer who left us too soon, urged us to live-by: “Consider optimism as a purposeful act of political resistance”.
You cannot use up creativity. The more you use it, the more you have of it (Maya Angelou)
18. For me, breakthrough ideas emerge, not from divine inspiration, but from deliberate recombination of existing elements. Building an ‘idea bank’ by collecting and mixing concepts across unrelated fields and learning from diverse public sources has helped me to transform and build my creativity from just waiting for a lightning to hit me with a brilliant idea. The lesson extends beyond: breakthrough ideas emerge from exhaustive investigation of possibilities rather than betting everything on a seemingly optimal solution. (Ness Labs)
Bottom line
19. Paraphrasing Mark Twain, I consider myself a political and HR mass educator (or a warrior communicator). The Readers are about leaving you with the conviction that we shall overcome.
20. I want to believe that I send convincing messages to the new generations and to those just beginning to organize: We need you! Without you, all what the Readers are-about dies. Not just in terms of time, but in terms of ideas. (Veronica Montufar)
21. Let the Readers be a resource you return to. Let them be something you adapt, question and build–on. Because tackling injustice is not the end. It is a step toward something more powerful, i.e., rewriting the rules together. (CESR)
22. Like reading, writing is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. Writing erects bridges between different peoples, and by having us enjoy, suffer, or feel surprise (or anger), unites us beyond the languages, beliefs, habits, customs, and prejudices that separate us. (Mario Vargas Llosa, rip)
23. I will continue to be brief and selective; just contributing to the burning arguments I cover week-after-week. I will not have solutions for all the problems although I will help you clarify boundaries of debate and areas of consensus, as well as help you identify priorities. I will further attempt to present in unvarnished form information that is high in purpose while devoid of rhetoric yet irreverent and I hope not irrelevant.
24. Yes, I know. Everything that needs to be said has been said. Since no one listened the first time it was said, it needs to be said again. (Purima Mane)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com