In a world of hunger and greed, knowledge for its own sake is more vital than ever
Students are now paying customers and the world revolves around capital and commerce. But reading and education are our best forms of both pleasure and resistance, writes Reinaldo Spitaletta in Colombian daily El Espectador. Reminders from assassinated Spanish poet Federico García Lorca.
In 1931, when inaugurating the public library of his hometown of Fuente Vaqueros in southern Spain, the poet Federico García Lorca gave a speech about hunger. He spoke of a hunger for learning and its baser variety, inside the belly, denouncing those who speak of economic demands without ever mentioning the cultural needs "for which peoples have cried out."
It was fitting that all should eat, he said, "but let all men know."
And yet in certain places, of course, they neither eat nor know — minds and bodies starved in equal measure.
García Lorca — who would be assassinated near the start of the Spanish civil war in 1936 — told his townsfolk he felt more sorry for those unable to learn than the physically famished. If he were hungry and destitute on the street, he said, "I wouldn't ask for a piece of bread but a book."
Cited as Spain's most accessible poet, García Lorca was sought out, according to documents, and shot for being a "socialist, mason and homosexual." He said in 1936 that social revolutions must be carried out with books and knowledge, and declared the French Revolution to be the result of the books of thinkers like Rousseau and the 18th century Encyclopédie. Likewise, the social struggle of his time, he said, derived from one book, Karl Marx's Das Kapital.
In our time of buoyant imperialism and neoliberalism, and untold miseries for millions worldwide, learning is as precious, and spurned, as in the 1930s. It's all about capital gains and currency curves today, and keeping the poor in their place — firmly on the sidelines. It's a matter of utility, and ignorance is far more useful here than books and philosophy. Ignorance makes people submissive and soft and malleable. Mincemeat. Even that dandy Oscar Wilde said it — art is entirely useless.
So, stop your Democritus and Aristotle, and your Kant and co., not to mention taking risks in life, for they will "yield" nothing. The dictatorship of money cannot allow anything so silly as literature at university to impede the march of profits.
The philosopher Nuccio Ordine observes on the uselessness of all "unprofitable" learning in his book L'utilità dell'inutile, which explains the dwindling budget for humanities at universities.
Youngsters are being told to study courses that lead to work and money. That precludes the arts, literature and philosophy that may prompt some big ideas and questions about the state of the world. Ordine recently told an online review, Ethic, that rankings were corrupting universities.
A chemistry professor at New York University was dismissed after students complained their examinations were too hard, and the university justified it, saying students must be treated well — as paying customers. That, Ordine said, was tantamount to students buying degrees.
Contempt for learning and education for its own sake is the norm now, in a world of banks and multinational businesses. What's the use of history, you'll hear time and again? The world's tormentors need a smooth ride on people's backs.
The reading public is a truculent lot, constantly reflecting on their rights and who's free or not. As Ordine states in his interview, Machiavelli already knew that an informed man was free and the ignorant one, inevitably a slave.
Ordine reminds those urging us not to waste an otherwise productive time reading Don Quixote or Les Misérables that the classics are not read to get a degree, but to learn to live. But that's enough daydreaming for today!
I wonder if anyone delights at the sight of a library these days, like García Lorca, assuming any new public libraries are still being opened.
— Reinaldo Spitaletta / El Espectador
• Deadly shooting in Hamburg: Eight people were killed in a shooting at a Jehovah's Witness place of worship in Hamburg, Germany. The gunman was among the dead. According to the German press, the attacker was a former member of the Jehovah’s Witness community who was not a known “extremist”. The investigation is ongoing.
• Ukraine update: CNN reveals that Russia has been capturing some of the U.S. and NATO-provided weapons and equipment left on the battlefield in Ukraine and sending them to Iran where the U.S. believes the country will try to reverse-engineer the systems. Meanwhile, nearly half a million people are without power in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, after Thursday’s Russian missile strike.
• Xi Jinping begins third term as China’s president: China's leader Xi Jinping has secured a third term as president from the country's parliament and was also named commander of China’s two million-strong People’s Liberation Army. This follows a consolidation of power that has made Xi, 69, China's most dominant leader in generations.
• Train rams into public bus in Lagos, killing six: A train crashed into a public bus in Nigeria’s commercial hub of Lagos leaving six dead and injuring dozens of others. In Africa's most populous nation, many roads are poorly maintained leading to accidents that claim thousands of lives every year.
• Mexico cartel turns in own men over U.S. kidnappings: Reports from the Mexican border city of Matamoros say a splinter group of the Gulf Cartel, called the Scorpions Group, has apologized for kidnapping four U.S. citizens last week, killing two of them, and has turned over the men it says are responsible. A letter was allegedly left with the men which apologized to the people of Matamoros, to the U.S. victims and their families, and to a Mexican woman killed last week when the gang fired on a white minivan the Americans were traveling in.
• Micronesia accuses China of bribery over Taiwan bid: The outgoing leader of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), one of the world’s tiniest countries, has accused China of bribing officials as part of a bid to take over self-ruled Taiwan. In a 13-page letter sent to Congress and state governors, President David Panuelo accused Beijing of carrying out a campaign of “political warfare” that included overt activities and covert actions. China has denied the accusations.
• NASA spots 2046 asteroid danger: According to NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination office, a newly-discovered asteroid, about the size of an Olympic swimming pool, has a “small chance” (1 in 625) of colliding with Earth 23 years from now, on Valentine’s Day 2046.
Malaysian daily The Star devotes its front page to the country’s former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin who has been charged with four counts of abuse of power involving $51.40 million and two counts of money laundering. The charges are connected to the awarding of government contracts to help building contractors during the coronavirus pandemic.
180 meters
Seoul is building the world’s tallest spokeless Ferris wheel: the “Seoul Ring” standing at a vertigo-inducing 180-m (591-ft) tall will be able to welcome up to 1,440 people. The wheel will operate using electromagnetic technology instead of traditional spokes.
What a Barcelona suicide tells us about trans bullying and media blind spots
The case of 12-year-old twins, one of whom was transgender, who jumped off a balcony after being bullied, led experts in trans childhoods to reflect on how to better protect children. And how to talk about it, writes Maria Eugenia Luduena for Buenos-Aires-based news agency Agencia Presentes.
🌈 In Barcelona, two 12-year-old Argentine twins, Leila and Iván, climbed on two chairs on a balcony and jumped from a third floor window. They left farewell letters, in which they wrote that they had been bullied for their Argentine accent. They had been living in Spain for two years — and Iván had been teased at school for his transgender identity. Leila, who survived and is in very serious condition, wrote on that piece of paper that she was jumping in solidarity with her brother.
📰 While the facts and circumstances are being investigated, many media outlets have reported the news without respecting Iván's gender identity, treating him as a female and mentioning his former name. Some, appealing to supposed journalistic accuracy, have inserted a disclaimer among their notes that states: “There is only evidence of the desire of the minor, aged 12, to be treated as a man through indirect sources. Neither his family nor his closest environment have spoken yet."
💬 For Gabriela Mansilla, who is the mother of Luana, the first trans girl to have access to a document that respects her gender identity, more information is needed so that families can embrace their children and so that the media can share the news appropriately. “We need urgent awareness to look at children but also at us as a society, and how we behave towards these bodies that make us uncomfortable. Let it be clear: these are preventable deaths. This is a social trans-homicide,” she says.
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
“We do not take orders from anyone.”
— Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has rejected calls for the United States military to intervene to stem drug cartel violence in Mexico, saying such a move would violate the country’s sovereignty and that his government was “not going to permit any foreign government to intervene in our territory, much less that a government’s armed forces intervene.”
Forensics teams are at work in the wake of a shooting at a Jehovah's Witness meeting hall in Hamburg, Germany, that left eight dead, including the suspected gunman, and several injured. — Photo: Christian Charisius/dpa/ZUMA
✍️ Newsletter by Emma Albright, Ginevra Falciani, Anne-Sophie Goninet and Hugo Perrin
