Literature y comunicacion by Various “The person who doesn't read lives only one life…The reader lives 5,000…Reading is immortality backwards” ― Umberto Eco

 Literature y comunicacion by Various

“The person who doesn't read lives only one life…The reader lives 5,000…Reading is immortality backwards” ― Umberto Eco

 

 

What is the role of Literature in a period of war, and if this conflict was not enough, yesterday we have had an update on Climate Change and the diagnosis and prognosis was more than severe, it looked apocalyptic and unless we change how we live, eat, move, warm, get electricity, it would be Game Over soon, for all of us, and as Yuval Harari showed in a recent essay in The Economist – he is the author of divine books, such as Home Deus, A Brief History of Tomorrow http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/01/50-shades-of-grey-by-e-l-james.html - the war will be a paradigm shift on a few levels, one, states will spend more on defense – and his prediction already proves accurate –because they now fear that what happened in Europe, can be replicated from Taiwan to other places – and then the acute crisis will push away the attention from the chronic problem of the planet

 

There is a quandary we may contemplate, a question of balance, equilibrium, or perhaps a moral question, now that the war is destroying lives not far from us, where civilians have been tortured and then killed, with testimonies showing the extent of the guilt that the would be new Stalin, who ordered his propaganda machine to spill out disgusting lies about Nazis leading the Ukraine – their president has become a living hero and role model for multitudes, while apparently women around the globe are excited by his masculinity, a joke on Real Time with Bill Maher said that the race to determine the Sexist Man of 2022 is already over and he is Jewish, so calling him a Nazi shows how stupid the perpetrators of such oxymorons are – and the brainwashed soldiers, the supporters of the Shorty Czar buy all this and take it with big shovels, hence they murdered innocent humans on their way, asking for the Nazis…

So the question is, how to approach this war from afar, and there is a whole spectrum of attitudes, from the Chinese loathsome embrace of the mass killer and his acolytes – they plan about the same thing for Taiwan (which is recognized here, at this table, as the legal representative of the Whole of China, mainland and all, for it is democratically elected, unlike the tyrant Xi) and they want to see how the ‘special operation’ of the Butcher from Moscow is going, what the repercussions are, they will expect the same support from him later on, although China is much bigger and more powerful than Russia, and the relationship between the two will increasingly be one of subservience – and other pariah states like North Korea, Syria, to the ‘neutral’ stance of others who want to benefit, or stand to lose a lot, like India, to profiteers, vicious rulers from the likes of the UAE (boycott Dubai, and all those who stay aloof, there are also Mexico with their fool and moronic AMLO, South Africa and plenty of others who play it to the both sides and stay away from them, if you agree with this note and more importantly, you feel you need to take a moral stand, which is what Western democracies have done.

There are Fifty Shades of Grey, apparently http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/01/50-shades-of-grey-by-e-l-james.html and there are very different position within the Western world, from the determination of Britain – much less dependent on the gas from the new Soviet Union and with a leader that is so keen to get the partying during Covid lockdowns behind him and finally show some stamina and leadership skills – to the reluctance of Germany – for so long promoting ostpolitik, if that is the word for their policy of getting friendly with the big bear, atoning for their vicious attack in World War II – to go full steam against the vile despot, seeing that they take so much gas from the new USSR…

 

Then there is Viktor Orban, who has just won re- election a few days ago, he will be leader for another four years, elected for the fourth time, though the opposition had united and picked the same candidate to run against Putin’s friend – the new Hungarian Attila the Hun has just said that he is ready to pay in rubles, if his buddies want it (which the president of the EU rejected yesterday, saying it would go against the rules of the Union) he run the campaign by accusing his opponents that they will have a war with Russia, whereas he is clearly prepared to embrace the Kremlin Shorty, the only important leader to congratulate Orban, for he has alienated even the Poles, that are on the same extreme side, when it comes to religious issues, illiberal democracy, but very much hate the post-cold war Stalin

Orban has massive support from…my own country, where an important Hungarian community has been given voting rights and many other benefits, thus becoming a huge block to prop him – on the other hand, the diaspora in places around the world is made to travel all the way to embassies, and the Hungarians in Transylvania only need to post their votes…it is also true that at times, the under signed has been feeling some unease, rejecting some of the more strident accusations coming from the Ukrainian front.

 

At times, it looks like ungratefulness, when they attack the West for not doing more – yes, they are under heavy fire and when you are up against the wall and face extinction, you are more vocal and makes sense to scream, agitate, do anything for survival, including telling those who give you weapons to put more on the table…there is the logic of them fighting for the rest of us, for if they were to be beaten soon, and even if this ends with Z winning after months or years, the next targets will be the other states that have been part of the USSR, the empire, Warsaw pact that the Moscow dictator wants to create again, and thus we would have to than Ukraine and stop whining and complaining.

There is clearly a sense of jealousy, when we see men behaving so admirably, showing courage, stamina, determination, resilience and plenty more qualities we may lack, then we take shots, like in the Aesop fable of the fox and the sour grapes (when she saw she could not reach them, the fox quickly decide they were sour, which in many ways seems like a very good strategy) and if we do not have the manhood, testosterone, cojones to act like Zelensky, then we criticize him and here it is…he does not say bad things about Erdogan, who is close to Putin and plays the double standard game – and he is overall, outside the narrow issue of the war, a quite objectionable figure, abusing his opposition, I think I have read that Turkey or Turkiye, as this other would be tyrant wants his country to be called by foreigners – and The Economist explains so well, it depends on the people and other factors, it is still habitual for English speakers to say Italy and Rome and not Italia and Roma, as the Italians call them