COMENTARIO PARA MI HERMANO OSCAR SOBRE EL PACIFISMO DE LOS DOMINICANOS-VENEZOLANOS !!

 Oye hermano Oscar, estaba leyendo tu ultimo articulo https://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/a328004.html  y es verdad lo que tu dice hermano, que los venezolanos son demasiado pacificos como los dominicanos, o no se si es que son histrionicos (y viven para los demas) tu no pareces Venezolano mentalmente, ni yo parezco dominicano mentalmente.  Porque esta sociedad dominicana no es nada como yo, la mayoria de los dominicanos son histrionicos, y parece que la influencia de España es que ha jugado un papel predominanten en la conducta un poco novelesca-histrionica de las clases medias y clases bajas dominicanas y venezolanas, que se parecen mucho.  Los americanos no son asi para nada. Aqui no existe la conducta anarquista-individualista-libertaria que es una conducta que permite a la gente concentrarse mejor.  Hay una ideologia que se llama comunismo-egoista.  Yo lei una vez que los comunistas deben ser egocentricos.  Yo antes creia que el egocentrismo era un pecado y era malo, y que lo mejor era vivir para los demas, pero esa forma de ser no permite que uno mental reflexione, piense mejor y medite mejor.  Ya que parece que el paradigma dominicano-venezolano-caribeño latino es el paradigma extrovertido (vivir para el que diran los demas) a diferencia del paradigma de sociedades inteligentes como China, Rusia, Africa del Sur, palestina, alemania, EE.UU, Suiza etc donde el paradigma es el egocentrismo, individualismo, y se puede combinar perfectamente el egocentrismo con el colectivismo y cooperativismo.  Mis familiares todos odian la politica, (debe ser que no estan conciente en que existe un vinculo-matrimonio entre la politica y el diario vivir y hasta lo que uno come y como uno vive.  Y que para vivir mejor, para comer mejor, para dormir mejor, para vivir como se vive en Suiza, etc. la gente de los paises que son malos para vivir (como venezuela, haiti. Rep. Dominicana, etc. deberian de ser mucho mas rebeldes-revolucionarios y agresivos y guerreros que los activistas politicos rebeldes de los paises donde se vive mejor que venezuela y rep. dominicana (como Francia. EE.UU, Noruega).  pero es una verguenza que el 90% de los dominicanos y venezolanos vivan una vida de perros, de animales esclavos y a pesar de eso son menos rebeldes que paises que no tienen tanta necesidad de protestar.  Oye hermano una vez John F. Kennedy fue a Colombia y le pregunto a los colombianos que como va a ser que los colombianos viviendo tan mal y comiendo tan mal no son comunistas-rebeldes.  Yo mismo me desespero con la conducta budista-pacifista de los dominicanos

ETERNAL RETURN 2

 Review Essay

Recurrence-Awareness: Eternal Return or Epigenetic Evolutionary Biology?

Thomas Steinbuch

Review of Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence, by Bevis E. McNeil, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Print ISBN 978-3-030-55295-4; ebook ISBN 978-3-030-55296-1; number of pages XVI, 278.  Reviewed for New Nietzsche Studies, general editor Babette E. Babich.

Overview: Professor McNeil has written about the eternal recurrence from the perspective that it is objective cosmology for N (1.5). That position is vulnerable to the criticism that we do not find a proof of the ER in the published works but mostly in the notebooks. The exceptions are two passages from GS (109 and 341) but they are couched in metaphor. McNeil thus turns to Thus Spoke Zarathustra and states that there, in "Vision and Riddle" the metaphor of eternal recurrence is “strengthened and developed into a deductive proof” (99f)." He accepts Paul Loeb’s reading that together, “Vision and Riddle” and “The Convalescent” contain a prospective memory. Z has a dying prospective memory of the shepherd  and the snake that amounts and it shows up in fact in "The Convalescent" and this shows recurrence-awareness and so is a fictional presentation of evidence that the eternal recurrence is objective cosmology. But McNeil’s attempt to establish that N intended a deductive proof of the eternal recurrence as objective cosmology in “Vision and Riddle” fails because the context strongly suggests otherwise, and he does not address it. He does not address Laurence Lampert’s commentary on this section in Nietzsche’s Teaching that sharply calls the thesis he advances into question, stating: “this chapter seems to go out of its way to mock syllogistic or formal argument as a way of dealing with fundamental questions” (166). It is a scholarly lapse that McNeil does not engage this context, nor Lampert’s development of the foregoing critique to which the context of the deduction gives rise. Also in “Vision and Riddle” and “The Convalescent” in following Paul Loeb, McNeil would seem to assuming that, having left metaphor behind, there is only one literal reading possible and that is the reading of recurrence-awareness. I will challenge that inference with a different literal reading of recurrence awareness in “Vision and Riddle” and “the Convalescent” from an evolutionary biology perspective as epigenetic evolution of novel mental life, and raise the question of what “is true” might then mean in the statement “the eternal recurrence is true." 

      Along these same lines of establishing that N believed that the eternal recurrence was objective cosmology, McNeil presents the idea in Chapter 2 that Nietzsche found a precedent of his idea of the eternal recurrence as objective cosmology in the Stoics and Heraclitus, and in that chapter he relies on N.’s notebooks to make his case that the eternal recurrence for N was a cosmological project as it was for the Stoics. Although there is interesting material in Greg Whitlock’s translation of N.'s Pre-Platonic Philosophers lectures, they are very early in Nietzsche career, before the crisis of 1879 that is the starting point for his tragic wisdom in EH, that date specifically cited there for its importance in his self-discovery of the meaning of his inheritance from his father as the same year of life as his father’s death. He says the decline in 1879 set off his will to health out of which he made his philosophy, which would seem be an identification of origins. McNeil develops this connection from Heraclitus to the eternal recurrence, stating that in the fragments of Heraclitus “we find the originating core of N.’s philosophy of the eternal recurrence” based on the lectures (234f). It becomes his main criticism of Heidegger’s interpretation in section 4.5 that he overlooks the Heraclitean element of play in N.’s cosmology, so the connection of the ER to Heraclitus it a key connection for different arguments. But in his section 2.4.1 in his introduction to Greek Philosophy and the Eternal Recurrence, almost all the relevant citations of N.’s idea of the eternal recurrence that could link it to the Stoa are from the notebooks: WTP and one from an early notebook, and as I take it, Professor McNeil felt that by this point in his book he had established that N thought the eternal recurrence was objective cosmology in the published writings in 2.3.4, as the metaphorical trappings of GS were not to be found in the literal presentation in “Vision and Riddle” where, putatively, a deduction of eternal recurrence is given, so that the notebooks can now come into use. The one exception of note in this chapter, and it is cited here and in 1.6 on Eternal Recurrence and Ancient Greek Philosophy, and also cited as the text on which Heidegger relies for his connection of the ER to Greek cosmology (159, n. 7), is a citation at EH/Books/BT/3 where N writes that the eternal recurrence could have been taught by Heraclitus – the word “could” is important. In this passage, N.’s tracing to the Greeks goes back to the myth of Dionysus and the idea of rejoicing in the inexhaustibility of life even though the highest types are sacrificed, which he, N, says was a tragic wisdom and that he was, likely, the first philosopher to have tragic wisdom, and so, likely, first tragic philosopher. The tragic pathos of joy in destruction, which is the "Yes" saying pathos, became the Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence, (EH/Books/Z/1/). Maybe he is the first, he says, but traces of eternal recurrence are in Stoic cosmology and they received all their main ideas from Heraclitus. N mentions Heraclitus twice in EH/Books/BT/3, and in both cases the mention is that perhaps the tragic pathos of joy in destruction is what he, Heraclitus, was getting at, that Heraclitus may have been  a tragic philosopher too. That is what would be hard to ascertain, whether the philosophy of Heraclitus is a transposition of tragic wisdom. But reading EH from the beginning, by the time we reach this text in EH/Books, we have been already introduced to N.’s Dionysian tragic wisdom from chapter one, "Why I am So Wise," and a glance at that chapter shows that N.'s tragic wisdom is what he learned by his experience of his inheritance of the condition from his father of death in life, that it was a “stimulus to Mehrleben.” He was thrown a bad curve ball by his inheritance, he devised techniques of affirmative psychology to address renunciation, and he developed life in himself to Mehrleben, evolution beyond necessary survival adaptations. The subject matter of EH/Wise is N.'s evolution. EH/Wise is also heuristic in revealing that the starting point of his development was the “highest opposition” life can face (at the variant to the epigraph at KSA 13, 23[14]) and yet the ending turned out so well in Mehrleben, and so he has very great confidence in life's inexhaustibility and indestructibility no matter how deeply it is cut into. This is his ethos appeal. So, reading EH from the beginning, by the time we reach Books/BT/3, we recognize that in his statement there that his doctrine of the eternal recurrence is a philosophical transposition of tragic wisdom, the wisdom referred to is in EH/Wise, that the will to power in life needs resistance to bring itself up to the next level and brings resistance upon itself that it may do so, and did so in him to the point setting before him the highest opposition it had, but instead of being destroyed by it, he reached the highest rung on the ladder of life -- and this is testimony to how the will to power works in us. The takeaway from the reference to tragic wisdom in EH/Books/BT/3 is that the tragic wisdom he acquired by his experience of the inheritance of death in life from his father but that led to Mehrleben in EH/Wise is his autobiographical introduction to the idea of the eternal recurrence, of why he is in a position to speak so confidently in this matter. Heuristically, the message of the ER is that we should discipline ourselves against renunciation and a philosophy of pessimism, opposing it instead with a philosophical form of thinking that disciplines us to accept that there will be no remission of destruction, that destruction will be unconditional always, that it is not going to ease up for us, thus to embrace destruction as the law of evolution. To fully defeat philosophical pessimism we should think of the developmental character of life as being in a closed circle from which we cannot escape, that the circle keeps going on forever --  not that that thought makes literal sense as life cannot keep evolving to Mehrleben if it is going in a circle. But none of his wisdom, which makes an ethos appeal, is  relevant to cosmology as an a priori project The only mention of the eternal recurrence in EH/Wise is in Wise/3 final daft about how he cannot will the eternal recurrence out of an objection to the recurrence of his mother and sister; besides the gloss at Books/BT/3, there are two other mentions in EH, at Book/Z 1 and Z 6. McNeil quotes the text from EH/Books/BT/3 in two sections 1.6 and 2.4.1 connecting the eternal recurrence to the Stoics and Heraclitus, but the connection is not direct and cannot support McNeil’s reading that N.’s idea of the eternal recurrence had its origin in Heraclitus’s cosmology. The text at EH/Books/BT/3 says that the eternal recurrence has is origin in N.’s tragic wisdom, and so connects it to EH/Wise, yet, in section 4.6 on Dionysus and the Eternal Recurrence, McNeil associates Dionysian Übermütigkeit, prankishness, with Heraclitean play (240) without consulting EH/Wise. But N.'s fractured mind split into a second Döppelgänger self (Wise/3, superseded draft) is just in the context of this Dionysian "prankishness," and that is a context of evolution and the context we should be using to test whether Heraclitean cosmic play is in this thought, which, after all, is before the idea of evolution. One might also consult KSA 11: 26[243] on Dionysian Wisdom. In that notebook text, will to power in life chooses for destructive paths as worthy of eternal recurrence because they are recognized as part of the process of evolution, why else?  Finally, in EH/Books/BT/3, N refers us to TI, the chapter “What I Owe to The Ancients,” in TI/Ancients/5, and again N identifies himself as the philosopher of Dionysus and as the teacher of the eternal recurrence. There is no mention of Heraclitus in this chapter on the topic of what he owes to the ancients. When the text of EH/Books/BT/3 is studied in relation to texts relevant to it, it cannot bear the argumentative weight Professor McNeil puts on it. Both of McNeil’s attempts to read the eternal recurrence as objective cosmology in the two published works cited, here and in “Vision and Riddle” that do not couch it in the metaphorical language of GS that has caused others to reject it as cosmology, fail. The idea that the originating thought of the eternal recurrence appeared for N in his reading of Heraclitus fails as its actual origin is N.’s own original tragic wisdom of gratitude for death in life, as he states in EH, and the ER bears similarity to Heraclitus only if he too somehow possessed tragic wisdom and turned it into Philosophy as he, N, did. That makes the chapter on the Stoics incidental and makes the criticism of Heidegger for missing the Heraclitean element of play in the eternal recurrence cosmology a discussion entre eux. EH/Wise tells us about N.'s tragic wisdom. We learn that it is wisdom about the role of destructiveness to life in the workings of evolution in ourselves. Life seeks to develop itself to become more in and by power over a resistance which cuts into it. He survived the worst of it and that is his ethos appeal why he can set the heuristic of the ER before us. The tragic wisdom that he  transposed into the Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence is a set of empirical statements. 

EH/Wise/4 and Wise/5 contain affirmation psychology in the setting of N.’s development from the highest opposition to life to Mehrleben. There is use of recurring time in both sections. The central activity in each is how affirmative psychology elides the vengeful constructions of the art of the ill will. Mehrleben is the result because vengefulness is avoidance of will to power and affirmativeness lines us up with it: we become rich in life as we are not vengeful (Wise/6). It is clear that N evolved acquired characteristics per these psychologically affirmative exercises; he designated these as being privileges owed to his father in inheritance from him, and that is the evolutionary pathway. So, must we not ask whether the affirmative psychology of willing the eternal recurrence presented in Z performs an evolutionary role, just as do the affirmative psychological exercises in Wise/4 and Wise/5 presented in the work that was to autobiographically introduce affirmative thinking of the ER in UAW IV?      

EH is a work of introduction in which N revealed his psychology and it was to be the autobiographical introduction to his four volume Hauptwerk, UAW. Although it was not completed, all six plans for it culminate in the announcement of the Philosophy of Dionysus, the Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence of the Same, in book IV. A onetime subtitle for Ecce Homo was: „Ecce Homo, oder ein Psychologen-Problem: Warum ich Einiges mehr weiss,“ (KSA 14: 465), and the final subtitle of Nietzsche contra Wagner is „Aktenstücke eines Psychologen“ although it is cited with the same subtitle as the early subtitle for Ecce Homo in his letter to Naumann of December, 17 1888 (KSB 8: 1193) to bring it more into line with The Case of Wagner’s final subtitle – so persistent was N on getting us to understand his psychology, hoping to piggyback on the popularity of CW and communicate his psychology by way of being the antithesis of Wagner in NCW. “Why I am So Wise,” where the psychological problem is stated, stands out in EH as the only chapter that would have been expressly picked up on in UAW in one of the plans for a book from N.’s critical philosophy that was to be titled der Misosoph, (KSA 13, 11 [416]). EH/Wise is very important for the study of the ER.  In his letter to Naumann of November 6, 1888, (KSB 8: 1139) N says that because AC will have the benefit of the introduction of EH, the situation he faced five years earlier with Z, presumably the broad misunderstanding of Z, will be averted, which suggests that EH can be read as introductory to Z as well.  And, in Wise/3 superseded draft, the last line states that to understand anything at all of Z one must have, like him, a "foot beyond life," which phrase ties to his inheritance from his father. The precondition is in evolution: he enters a world of lofty things as a privilege owed [indirectly] to his father, and that is the world of Z: the implication is that that world came to be as evolutionary from the inheritance of death in life. Finally, and most relevantly, in the case of a text crucial for McNeil's and Heidegger's project of connecting the ER to Heraclitus's cosmology, in EH/Books/BT/3, N says that the psychology of joy in destruction, which is the psychology of the tragic poets, lies behind the idea of the ER. That psychology is in evidence in EH: it is the psychological problem of gratitude for death in life, which is his tragic wisdom.  These texts, together with the letter to Naumann, are the basis for my use of EH Wise/4 and Wise/5 on affirmation psychology for my exegesis of the ER in "On Redemption," that shows it does not document the McNeil/Heidegger thesis that the ER was objective cosmology for N. To sum up: the plan for a book, The Will to Power, was superseded by the work N stated to be his Hauptwerk, EH + UAW I-IV,  and we do not know that a deductive proof of the eternal recurrence would have appeared in Book IV. Furthermore, N.'s introductory autobiography of tragic wisdom that he transposed into the Philosophy of Dionysus of the ER, as he states in Books/BT/3, is a narrative of his evolution to Mehrleben. Wise/4 and Wise/5 with their disciplines of affirmative psychology, are autobiography of evolution and do not suggest that the intended follow up was to be the ER as objective cosmology. Also, although by the time of Wise/3 final draft N had dropped the plan for a four volume work, that text contains the one explicit mention of the ER in Wise, and we should note that the context in which it is mentioned there is the context of evolution, (KSA 6, 268, 16-18). But McNeil accepts Heidegger's view of the WTP notebooks as reliable in telling us what he thought about the ER although the project was superseded as a literary project.

In EH, Wise/4 and Wise/5, N presents autobiographical narratives of his affirmative psychology. Both open with a statement of beginnings in his inheritance from his father of death in life and have a terminus ad quem in Mehrleben. In a variant to the epigraph we read about how he created ein Mehr of life in himself „als Schöpfung, eine wirkliche Zuthat“ in having faced the highest opposition to life, which, revaluatively, is the highest prize life can get, KSA 13, 23[14]), and how life in him is now at the highest rung, Wise/1, 2nd sentence, and this is a narrative of evolution.

  In Wise/4 Nietzsche tells how he does not know the art of making others take and hold things against him, that no one has born him ill will. He adds the words "this too" in reference to this as being a privilege he owes to his father, his "incomparable father" -- so named lest we wonder how he could owe him so much, but it is because it is a negative debt and his father is incomparable in being the source of so consuming a negative effect. The referent of "too" is to the superseded draft of Wise/3, (KSA 14, 473) in which he says that he owes all his privileges to his father, but not either life nor the affirmation of life, and this now also includes the privilege that no one bore him ill will in Wise/4 and of not living among his equals, hard to do, in Wise/5. N neglected to make the correction when he sent in the final version of Wise/3 in which that line is not to be found. Wise/5 also opens with a reference to his father and also identifies a privilege, namely, of never living among his equals, but this section also explains his privilege to be the bearer of heavy guilt per the wrongdoing of others to him, as it is the privilege identified in Wise/4, but in Wise/5 the privilege is of not living among his equals, the privilege of not regarding himself as equally entitled not to be wronged, owed to his father as well. But these privileges belong to life and the affirmation of life, which did not come to him as inheritance from his father, he says as much, nor, obviously, as inheritance from him after life and the affirmation of life is excluded. The privileges have their origin in his "foot beyond life," which is the negative inheritance from his father, but then how did they come to him from that?  It is in this line also that N says he owes his privilege of entering a world of lofty and delicate things to his father and that one cannot understand a word of Z apart from entering from a foot beyond life. The world of lofty and delicate things he is privileged to be in is the world of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, owed indirectly to his father from the negative inheritance from him. So the privileges are owed his father by indirection, but then, to ask again, how did the privileges come from the negative inheritance? After the statement of privilege, the narrative of Wise/4 shifts from others as not having ill will against him to his having no ill will against others, even in cases in which he would be upholding a great value by doing having it. Nor does he have ill will against himself, and this (revaluation) marks him as an anti-Christian, he says. It is because he does not have ill will against others that others have never had ill will against him. What he did was affirmative – not having ill will towards others is affirmative, ditto in Wise/5, not blaming the wrongdoer for his wrongdoing as deserving punishment is affirmative. If he did not inherit the privilege of others not having ill will against him from his father but it is still owed him, it must be owed him indirectly, and what he inherited directly that it connects to must be whatever he was designating in the phrase above about having a foot beyond life together with its related expressions in the chapter, and of these most importantly in the riddle of Wise/1 of having already died as his father while still [having to] live and grow old as his mother, (my words in brackets). He owes his privilege of no one having ill will against him to his father, but by reason of his having no ill will against others, which leaves the only way the privilege can be traceable to his father to be if the ill will came from him. That means that his trait of bearing others no ill will was the reversal of that inherited ill will and was autogenetic with N, and that is a phenomenon of evolution on the path of Mehrleben. His privileges were acquired characteristics. He acquired the trait of not disprizing others in ill will and in  Wise/5, the trait of not being aggrieved when he is wrongfully treated and is in the right. There, the privilege is not asserting the equal right not to be wronged, not living among his equals. Relinquishing the equal right not to be wronged opens on to blaming himself for the wrongdoing, even up to the point of bearing the “heavy guilt” identified as a privilege as the opposite of blaming in Wise/4, KSA 6, 270, 26). This too is clearly not something his father did before him, so the direct inheritance from him in virtue of which it is owed must have been the ill will disposed to moral aggrievement at being wronged, and the privilege of the heavy guilt then owed him by indirection could only have come autogenetically by mastering the disposition to aggrievement. These are privileges because they came by mastery of wanting to retaliate, which resists the development of life as retaliation is weakening, and the mastery means evolution of Mehrleben to the highest rung of life. He states his privilege of bearing guilt as being to bear a heavy guilt because a heavy guilt is the counterbalance to being severely morally aggrieved, so to bear the heavy guilt means reaching the privilege of the highest richness in life needed to becoming equal to that degree of severity. This is epigenetics, starting with an inheritance of an epigenetic variation from his father and ending with the privileges as acquired characteristics evolved by reprogramming his epigenome by creating a stressful opposing mental environment of affirmative psychology. The acquired characteristics are epigenetic evolution and each is associated with a revaluation.   

In Wise/4's affirmative psychology Nietzsche tells us that, in his encounters with buffoons, bears and lazy students, he tames every bear, that the buffoons mind their manners around him and the that the lazy students were industrious with him and, to anticipate the theme of Wise /5, that he never gave out a punishment to them. These changes are not realized in reality. The starting point is his inclination to take and hold against, which is an artistic construction by the ill will. Of this inclination, he says, he must remain master: "bear” “buffoon” and "lazy" are the work of the disprizing art of the ill will and contain vengeful, abusive thinking, and he must master the ill will in himself that makes these constructions he says, that is, master a first-order psychology of a disprizing and abusive ill will that runs out of control. The same pattern may be found in Wise/5: the privilege is that he does not assert his equal entitlement not to be wronged, he does not “live among his equals” which then becomes the privilege to bear the “heavy guilt” as he says in Wise/4 and is in Wise/5 in the idea of the god who blames himself. The affirmative psychology that leads to the privilege of a heavy guilt is to blame his own innocence for the wronging -- blaming innocence for its liability to wronging -- instead of finding turpitude in the wrongdoer, to thus master moral aggrievement and elide the wrongdoer and sometimes even the wrongdoing. Note that the text is progressive on this point, "equal to" the wrongdoing is harder than to the wrongdoer. What comes from his father is the ill will to be morally aggrieved and he masters aggrievement by the psychological exercise of bearing the guilt for the wrongdoing himself, with Mehrleben as the result associated to that acquired characteristic. It is by this indirection that the privilege is owed.  His acquired privileges are his evolution of himself and his revaluations are associated with evolving them. 

Affirmative psychological exercises were the key. In Wise/4, N masters his ill will to disprize by the discipline of remaining unprepared. He does not permit himself to negative expectations against which he must brace himself of what is to happen. Instead, by his unpreparedness, what happens is in his experience just as chance would have it and not per his negative forecasting thoughts that would construct it otherwise. He says that he is the equal of any chance event, by which I take him to mean that, in those days at least, nothing like "still a buffoon, but not as bad as I expected he would be" – which would seem to be equal standing against something – is any longer happening, and that, at this point in time at which he is in the position to write Ecce Homo to lead us in the Revaluation, he is capable of full equality to chance. But less-than-full-out equality is implied. Importantly for the study of the meaning of eternality in the idea of the eternal recurrence, he says that he is always equal to chance in Wise/4, that is, he never arouses ill will in others, and in Wise/5 that he never lives among his equals. These tense universals point to how we should be reading eternality in eternal recurrence. Plainly, they are not literal statements but declamations of love of life enough to do this in that it is very painful, and they make his ethos appeal to lead in the Revaluation. My takeaway from these sections of EH/Wise to the ER is that the ER too is affirmative psychology that facilitates  evolutionary development.  

  As acquired characteristics, N.'s privileges could have made changes to his germ-line cells as the variation from his father he was trying to sort was very possibly carried in the germ-line. Weismann's in-famous barrier that would prevent this has been shown to be false. After all, why would N bother with the evolution of acquired characteristics unless he was thinking that acquired characteristics could consolidate into a common inheritance channel going forward as „eins dichte und zusammentrage,“ as he might have been formulating the idea of the Overhuman in “On Redemption”?  Note that the acquired characteristics of unpreparedness and relinquishing equal entitlement not to be wronged are also revaluations, revaluation psychology here is evolutionary. Also, the revaluation takes us from a lie to the truth: in Wise/4, the moral lie is that what is merely chance can be bearish, etc. and in Wise/5 the moral lie is that I am equally entitled not to be wronged and so there is wronging. If anything is being set up by this for UAW IV it would be to look for how the affirmative thinking of the ER is a revaluation that brings into being a kind of general acquired characteristic, so it is about evolution, not cosmology, and truth not mendacity.

  The central doctrines of N.'s ideas about of evolution are that all living things seek to become more, that they seek out resistances to do so, that a resistance must be equal, not above or below (see Wise/7 also, which perhaps was written intending to autobiographically introduce these ideas), and that the will to power in life interprets the overall resistance it faces to make it to be its equal, that is, it scopes the resistance down to an aspect it can face as equal and progresses up the chain of stronger resistance (WTP 656, 688; KSA 12, 2[148], and 2[151]. In Wise/4 equality is to the compulsion to disprize is full-out, and that means being equal to pure chance: the affirming discipline of unpreparedness has elided from imagination all there is to disprize as bearish, and for any value presented it is just chance. We find the same idea in Wise/5, which repeats Z 1“The Adder's Bite” on the point, where he neutralizes the wrongdoing to himself by the revaluation that he does not have an equal right not to be wronged although innocent, so he is always equal to not living among his equals, always relinquishing equal entitlement not to be wronged when wronged. He is equal, as equal in will to power, to the wrongdoer's innocence contra his compulsion to blame. So, equality is full out in these sections, making his ethos appeal. He masters aggrievement at his innocence wronged by the psychological exercise of foregoing that he has an equal right not to be wronged, and thus the ill will's imagining of wrongdoing and the wrongdoer cathected with vengefulness and the idea of deserved punishment are elided. The psychology of the ill will in Wise/5 is in the thought: "But I am his equal, equal-in-rights equal, and it is as his equal-in-rights that I am wronged,” and he says that he never asserts his equal right not to be wronged. We find the same critique of asserting equal rights AC/57. Always equal to chance, so not in ill will of expectations for others, and always equal (in will to power) to not living among his equal-in-rights equals so not falling to aggrievement, are declamations, not literal statements. They declare love of life. While the exercises  lead to Mehrleben and imply the tragic psychology of joy in destruction, they are very painful at the level at which we have to live them and take a lot of courage to do. Both are psychological exercises to control vengefulness and clearly, they had lesser results early on as he applied them, and chance and moral guiltlessness are just neutralities left after the ill will has run itself out. Applying the psychological exercise elides an intentional object of the ill will cathected with vengefulness and replaces it with a neutral an sich. 

  N.’s wisdom, possessing it or not, is at the heart of the statement at EH/Books/BT/3, KSA 6, 313 7-12 that Z.’s idea of eternal recurrence might be traceable to Heraclitus. It an important text for McNeil and Heidegger. N asks the question whether his idea of the eternal recurrence is distinctive in Philosophy, that he has transposed Dionysianism into a tragic philosophy. In Dionysianism we find that in face of the fact that life sacrifices its highest expressions, Dionysianism responds by rejoicing in life's inexhaustibility. This become the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poets of joy in destruction. The point of the section that stands out is the statement that N alone was in the position to transpose Dionysianism into Philosophy, tragic pathos into philosophical pathos, because before him, tragic wisdom was lacking among philosophers, but he is not sure if completely so. He then asks whether there were antecedents of his tragic wisdom and he thinks that maybe it may be found in Heraclitus. If Heraclitus possessed tragic wisdom, his cosmology might be a philosophical transposition of the Dionysian, just as is N.’s. Clearly, if his thought of being the first philosopher to have tragic wisdom is so in play in this history of the ER at Books/BT/3, before drawing any conclusions we should ask what it was that he presented as his wisdom in the first chapter “Why I am So Wise," and the least glance at the chapter shows that its subject is evolution. The tragic wisdom of EH/Wise is that destruction is resistance for the will to power, and that otherwise we will not evolve. But then how can the ER be a priori cosmology if it transposes a biological law of our evolution which is empirical?  It is heuristic that the ER is a declamation of resolve to commit to develop life under this law, the resolution that, so to speak, overcomes itself as resolve to make resolve a binding necessity and to so identify with it. What is left is ER's  truth content, but it is just what coincides with the empirical law of our evolution: that will to power needs resistance to develop life and so resistance will keep happening because evolution keeps happening. Combined, these become N.'s Philosophy of Dionysus: The Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence, but this combination would seem not to be literal cosmology. He may well have first encountered the idea of eternal recurrence in his early studies of Greek Philosophy but that does not mean that he later took it over as cosmology and was writing about it as such in Z, and there is much to suggest that he had not.

In EH/Wise we find that the starting point for N is in his inheritance from his father. Next there is a change by means of self-imposed psychological disciplines that address vengefulness against life as cathected in the disprizing constructions of the ill will, and then the creation of life to Mehrleben. This is evolution. From what we know about epigenetics, N.'s affirming psychological exercises functioned to create an artificial environment of psychological stress against a first-order psychology that induced change in his inherited epigenetic profile from his father by working against its associated mood disorder. The affirming psychology results in Mehrleben because it clears up vengefulness and turns us towards the will to power. But it must be asked why is N telling us all this about himself, how can the revaluation pass through him? Perhaps N.’s epigenetic evolution went beyond the idiosyncratic because by reversing what was sui generis in his inheritance from his father he was reversing something wider that was also in that inheritance from him, namely, the socio-biology behind Christian socialization. From my research, which is limited, it is within theoretical possibility that because of his progressive brain disease, KLN experienced trauma that induced further regulation of the epigenetic code in him already associated with the mood disorder of revenge that is a single identity in the socialization of Christianity. That further regulation of that identity then  affected FN so that in dealing with his father the personal and the universal became indistinguishable for him. N.'s evolution then becomes all our evolution. 

Professor McNeil cites “Vision and Riddle” and “The Convalescent” as containing documentation that the eternal recurrence was objective cosmology for N, stating that there is a deduction of the ER in “Vision and Riddle” that is free from the metaphorical presentation of it in GS, and that Paul Loeb has shown that in this text Z dies and has a prospective memory of his struggle with disgust at humanity that he picks up again reborn in his next life in “The Convalescent” thus to give evidence of recurrence awareness. McNeil writes that in “Vision and Riddle”: “the cosmological metaphor of eternal recurrence in GS 109 and 341 is strengthened and developed into a deductive proof" (99). Laurence Lampert argued, and at length, in Nietzsche’s Teaching that it cannot be judged with confidence what N.’s intention was in presenting the deduction in “Vision and Riddle,” (160-171). Z tells his vision of eternal return to the sailors whom he praises for choosing not to “grope along a thread with a cowardly hand” the thread of argument, hating to deduce a truth they should be courageously guessing at instead. They are identified as the true audience for the riddle in EH/Books/3.  It is not a guess at a possible deductive outcome, not like: 'Gödel guessed at formal undecidability before proving it,’but as an alternative that hates to deduce. They must already know it is true. And, per Professor Loeb’s interpretation, I will offer an alternative literal reading of recurrence awareness in "Vision and Riddle" that does not require us to conclude that N believed in the objectivity of eternal return cosmology.   

  If Z is not deducing the ER, what otherwise is going on? I suggest that during the presentation of the deduction of the ER, his evolution to Mehrleben by its affirmative psychology is also occurring. Willing the ER is evolutionary just as are the psychological exercises of Wise/4 and Wise/5. In that case, the deduction is double-signifying: for the dwarf, it is a deduction -- and a bad one as it is an enthymeme -- and he becomes estranged as it takes on its true identity as evolutionary and he vanishes. He vanishes when the task of evolution is accomplished, his discouraging message, perhaps that the Spirit who bears the fatality (Verhängniss) of a task bears the heaviest fate Schicksal, (EH/Books/Z/6, KSA 6, 345, 4-7) overcome by Z’s courage. Z's unfolding of the thought of the ER is accompanied by his awareness of life developing in himself. He recognizes willing the ER as the principle of Mehrleben and runs with it. He hears the dog howling and remembers that he heard a dog howl in his distant childhood and that is his past life and he has died and been reborn. Perhaps what has happened is that given the causal connection between willing the eternal recurrence and the evolution of Mehrleben, he identifies with willing the eternal recurrence as the principle of Mehrleben up to its literal idea of death and rebirth. Z temporarily identifies with the idea of the objectivity the ER, the logical "must," of the deduction, as the principle of the evolution of Mehrleben to the point of believing he has a memory that the dog barking in his present life happened in his past life, and so believing he has awareness of his present life as a recurrence. Recurrence-awareness would then be the evolution of novel mental life that Z creates in himself on the spot as willing the ER is pushed to its literal outcomes.

The point about the sailors guessing is that they do not take the coward’s way in following the ER as deduction but by it, they courageously face their own weakness of vengeful retreat from the law of evolution. The truth they guess is that willing ER is evolutionary, and it must be that they can guess it because they already know it, an anagnorisis of tragic knowledge. So what shall we say “is true” means here? In this reading, recurrence-awareness is not veridical, and the deduction of the ER is not logically sound, but it can be said that as long as I am achieving Mehrleben by believing in eternal recurrence I entirely cease to care about its literal falsehood. That is the reason for believing it although false. However, outside the human life-world, it might mean nothing. Would believing in the eternal recurrence have been developmental for Neanderthals for instance? We do not know whether they needed it. As paleo-epigeneticists mapped out the Neanderthal epigenome and identified the zones of differentiated methylation in their bodies in contrast with ours, they found, as expected, that the zone of highest differentiation was the brain. But then they recognized that one-third of the differences in the human brain had already been traced to cognitive disorders and mental illness in us which Neanderthals, then, must not have had. To go beyond N.'s speculations in GM on the origins of morals, perhaps our moralized vengefullness against will to power in life is traceable to gene regulation in this third of the differences, maybe because we had a different history from Neanderthals, or maybe we came out of the same history differently, or maybe because of the traumatic event that brought about their extinction but which we survived – they vanished about 40,000 years ago when the magnetic poles of the earth reversed, and maybe also because of it – all are ways pathologically weakened life that became so vengeful against the will to power that evolution stalled out could have appeared in us but not in them. Just to develop the point a bit, how otherwise could it have happened that we became vengeful against the will to power in ourselves in the weakness of vengefulness to thus make ourselves even weaker in life and slipping backwards? This would seem not to be possible being selected for as an adaptation except in the case in which it appeared in an environment of a cataclysmic and near extinction event that left a traumatic imprint on the epigenome of the remnant population, and not as in the gradualist Darwinian scenario of point mutations selected for. In this case, we can think about recurrence-awareness as novel mental life that we cause to evolve in ourselves as epigenetic evolution as we reverse the effect of our traumatic past, pushing ourselves to assent to the ER reserved for literal belief. But matters may have stood otherwise with our Neanderthal cousins, and that means that there is a theoretical range in which this statement does not have meaning. So our assent to recurrence-awareness can be stronger than als ob assent and can create epigenetic evolution, but it still can be false outside the human life-world. So I agree with the Loeb/McNeil thesis that we can read recurrence-awareness in "Vision and Riddle," but I think only within this evolutionary framework of novel mental life. 

         The thought of the ER is first introduced in Z on “On Redemption,” and Professor McNeil writes a section on it, 1.9, but he does not address the leading idea of the section, and that is that we are vengeful against the will to power in life in ourselves and in others and we exculpate ourselves in the thought of the past's pastness being punishment to be in good conscience about why we are suffering. The line that bears this reading is: “’punishment’ is what revenge calls itself, with a lying word it creates a good conscience for itself.” As we unravel this line, it becomes clear that willing the ER is the fix for an empirical a bottleneck in our evolution and not cosmology.

The psychological affirming exercises in Wise/4 and Wise/5 work by creating a psychological inconsistency: it is psychologically impossible both to be unprepared and also to construct the other in disprizing constructions (in Wise/4) and, just the same in Wise/5, it is psychologically impossible both to construct the wrongdoer as deserving punishment and also blame oneself for the wronging. Similarly, in willing the ER, we cannot continue to treat the past’s pastness as a punishment since willing the ER locks out a different past as unavailable to imagination in the recurrence of the same past, so we cannot will both that the actual past recur as the same and also imagine the different past. The imagined different past is cathected with vengefulness against the actual past in which I suffered on account of will to power's development of life. Life will sacrifice itself for power, as N tells us in Z 2: "On Self-Overcoming." 

Mastering vengefulness against the past means becoming equal in will to power to “same past” for any past that I want difference to, where “equal” in “equal to the same past” is an interpretation by the will to power and not the entire actual past all at once, just what I can handle, and then later "equal to" moves up. The end goal is to replace the thought of the past as punishing by its pastness with the thought of neutral time in which the actual past's pastness is elided by the recurrence of sameness, as with it also the imagined different past as it cannot be imagined.

We learn from EH/Books/BT/3 that the ER is a philosophical transposition of tragic wisdom into Philosophy. N can make this transposition into tragic philosophy because, he is, likely, the first philosopher to have tragic wisdom. In "Why I am So Wise" we learn that his catastrophic inheritance of death in life from his father was a stimulus to evolution, to Mehrleben. He discovered in himself a track of non-Darwinian evolution to life beyond life necessary for survival. His tragic fate was death in life and he experienced it as the highest opposition to life as how life became Mehrleben in him as power over this tendency.  He is grateful to it, to his father "I thank my father," as the highest opposition, and his gratitude is the psychology of the tragic poet.  His wisdom is that, like it or not, it is the nature of the will to power in life to sacrifice itself for power over a resistance, power that becomes realized in and by the life of Mehrleben, that his inheritance had this meaning. We have tragic fates, but deep within them lie the workings of evolution to develop life in our species. N fused his new interpretation of evolution to the tragic psychology of the poets, and this became the Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence.

In all our lives then, and at all times, is the backdrop of will to power sacrificing life to engage a resistance, chunking the resistance into equal bits little by little, to grow in power over it in and by Mehrleben.  But we are not aligned with this tragic law of our evolution and we become vengeful on account of the sacrifice of life will to power has required. We do not acknowledge it as resistence set by will to power we must face to evolve. Instead, in vengeance against it, I shun will to power for doing this to me, and in others, I actively seek to cripple it. I am vengeful against this resistance to life that has set me back, vengeful against the will to power, and, in vengeance, I construct the resistance in ill will as a historical event. In my ill will, I form up the idea of the different past in my imagination and cathect it with vengefulness against the actual past that pastness has locked up in opposing sameness. I have constructed the resistance set by will to power in the ill will and I forego Mehrleben, and so I suffer more. This suffering of which now I myself am the cause has to be hidden, it is telltale, it should not be happening after all, this weakness, and others will wonder. And, of course, I look for the company of those like myself.  I lie to myself and to others and hide the trail connecting my suffering to vengefulness against the will to power from my not engaging with it. Were my suffering truthfully exposed and tracked as of my own doing, we would not be allowed to get away with it, as this becomes culture, and -- this is the worry -- an opposing culture might arise that would force me to stop doing it. So, I reconfigure these events to make my suffering come out as punishment and not my own doing, pastness is punishing me, and I disguise myself in good conscience. N used the phrase, "the Machiavellianism of the good and the just," and it would seem apt to this maneuver. The art of the ill will disprizingly reconstructs in imagination the resistance set by will to power to more power as Mehrleben as an event in the historical past with its law of pastness, and imaginatively constructs the different past opposed to it and locked out by pastness cathected with revenge. The true object of revenge is the will to power, revenge that life develops as it does as power, but the vengeful art of the ill will constructs will to power's setting of the resistance in its imagination as an event in the historical past that cannot be different. That thought against it -- sameness that cannot be different -- is full of suffering and revenge and, as this is all about powerlessness, the ill will assigns its suffering to the past's pastness by the further imaginative vengeful construct that the past's pastness is punishment for its suffering, to create the good conscience. My suffering is actually due to my vengefulness against will to power, but I have lied to claim that my suffering is punishment by the past's pastness and that I am good, that is what good is. All things that happen become punishment, the historical itself becomes punishment. I create the good conscience and face others aggressively in good conscience to counter reproach against myself. I do not want to face having to strengthen myself against the resistance set by will to power as I am, of course, weak at that point, otherwise there is no benefit to life to facing it, and so facing it is painful.  Behind us all then, with few exceptions, is failure to square up with the process of will to power to evolve life in us as it does by its law of setting a resistance against us to master in Mehrleben. We are always backward looking on our failure because we are vengeful on account of it because more weakened, and remain so in a permanent state. In this way, the culture of Christianity is generated ongoingly. The more I fail off, the more will to power tries to build up life by setting resistances for me, and so the more I fail off as it is now harder. It is a downward spiral, and soon human beings will appear in whom there is so much weakness that they will not be able to square off with anything the will to power sets as resistance, and that will be the beginning of the end of Mehrleben as a potential for our species. Beyond heuristic, the idea of the eternal recurrence unravels the Machiavellian lie about our suffering that the past's pastness is the cause of suffering as punishment, and not that it is failing off engaging with the will to power. It effects an anagnorisis and turns us to engagement with how life evolves in us. Willing the ER destroys the disprizing construction of the historical, destroying the past's pastness and the imagined different past in the recurrence of the same actual past, and so opens on to neutral time, turning us towards engaging with how life evolves itself. Willing the ER is "beyond humanity and beyond time," (EH/Books/Z/1). 

The will redeems its suffering foolishly by avenging itself on others. The foolish redemption of the suffering will is by avenging itself on “all who can suffer,” that is, all who do not yet suffer and do not just on account of their being in line with the development of life by will to power, and so who can suffer still. This is what N was reporting in saying pity had destructively intruded on him as he was growing in Mehrleben in all of three cases, (Wise/4, KSA 6, 270, 19-28). We, Christians at any rate, destructively intrude on others in vengefulness against will to power in the development of life working in them. We vengefully seek to create the suffering of weakness in others to get them to fail off trying to master the resistance set before them by will to power, doing so as vengefulness against the will to power ensuring its failure and spreading vengefulness against it. Then life does not evolve anywhere or in anyone, and we are avenged -- the mission of Christianity. This point from "On Redemption" relates by contrast to Wise/4 and Wise/5 where N discloses that this is himself, he is the Christian, but then he shows us how he dealt with it.  His ill will is set destructively against the stronger will to power in those he encountered. As he is on the lowest rung on the ladder of life, a case of extreme weakness in life, his first order compulsion is to vengefully attack life in others as vengefulness against stronger will to power. The bears and buffoons and lazy students of Wise/4 and the wrongdoer of Wise/5 are his own disprizing constructions in ill will cathected with vengefulness, as they are always anders. But he masters vengefully striking back by using psychological exercises to create new mental life that replaces the moralizing vengeful ill will of old mental life. In Wise/4, vengeful moralizing has appeared as disprizing others as "bears" and "buffoons" and "lazy." He is inclined by his first-order psychology to want to punish his "lazy" students, but by the psychological exercise of being unprepared, he rethinks them as industrious. He has evolved new mental life as unpreparedness and, in Wise/5 new mental life as not living among his equals to rethink the wrongdoer and wrongdoing as not opprobrious. It is the same with willing the eternal recurrence: it evolves new mental life forcing us out of vengefully interpreting suffering (of weakness) as a punishment by the historical and its pastness to face that we do it to ourselves; "punishment" is the Lügenwort. Willing the ER is on the border line between the foolish redemption of suffering (of weakness) as beings of raging vengefulness on the one side and, on the other, authentic redemption in which I engage positively with the will to power as it works to develop life in myself  On the one side is a culture in which we are turned in upon ourselves, abusive of others in their struggles to develop life in themselves, victimizing them in their vulnerability according as they can still suffer, in revenge against the will to power as revenge against the will to power in them. Destructively intruding pity belongs here, (see above). On the other side, I have turned outward away from society and compulsive intrusion on the other to engage alone with the will to power and become who it has set for me to be. N's task as teacher of the ER is to prepare this Selbstbesinnung in humankind. 

Professor McNeil has two chapters on Heidegger, 3 and 4. He writes in 3 that Heidegger’s interpretation is “essential to any genuine understanding of [Nietzsche’s] philosophical project” (p.157), a claim many would contest. Chapter 4 is "a full critical appraisal of [Heidegger]" (210), but in these days in which Heidegger has emerged as the central philosopher of a globalizing far right, it should at least be acknowledged that the question of the influence of National Socialism on Heidegger’s interpretation of N is on the minds of many.

          My negative review rating is based on Professor McNeil’s scholarly lapses. In Z， in ignoring key leading lines in chapters that decisively impact his position. The leading indicator line in “Vision and Riddle” is that the sailors “hate to deduce, and prefer to guess,” but he ignores the line and does not engage Lampert’s lengthy discussion, based largely on this line, critical of a literal reading of a deduction. Professor McNeil’s decontextualization of the deduction from its complexifying context of deducing being hated versus guessing being preferred is a serious scholarly lapse.  

           In “On Redemption,” the key indicator line is: “punishment is what revenge calls itself, it creates a good conscience for itself with its lying word” but Professor McNeil does not address it. This line, together with the line that willing the ER delivers us from the Spirit of Revenge, implies that willing the eternal recurrence disabuses us of a self-deception that hides not engaging the will to power to life in ourselves. Professor McNeil should have acknowledged and engaged that line because its implication is that the ER is not objective cosmology. He should have engaged Lampert's critique of Heidegger that ignoring the narrative structure of Z in regard to this chapter set up his mishandling of "Vision and Riddle" and "The Convalescent" in Part III.

           Professor McNeil must also be faulted for uncritically following Heidegger in his use of the text of EH/Books/BT/3 as documentation that N believed that precedents of his idea of the eternal recurrence as objective cosmology are to be found in Heraclitus, on the grounds that there are many contextual factors involved  in that section that do not allow for this straightforward tracing: that perhaps Heraclitus’s cosmology is a transposition of the tragic wisdom, N is unsure because he is unsure whether Heraclitus possessed tragic wisdom that he otherwise believes was lacking in philosophers before him but which he has achieved, which is philosophical autobiography, which then implies that the point of the comparison to Heraclitus is lost otherwise; that we learn from EH/Wise that the tragic wisdom required to transpose Dionysianism into the Philosophy of the ER is a thesis about evolution that states a contingent truth about how evolution works, and so its carry over to the ER makes its truth content also contingent and so knowable only a posteriori; that the heuristic involved in the ER would seem set up by the declamatory tense universals in the affirmation psychology of Wise/4 and Wise/5 on the matter of N.'s love of life in overcoming vengefulness against resistance set by will to power and engaging it, as it is painful, to make his ethos appeal, that thus suggests introduction to the idea that eternality in the ER is declamatory of love of life despite its terrible law of evolution; that the opening quotation in that text to TI/What I Owe to The Ancients/5 where N also identifies himself as working on Dionysianism as transposed into the Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence and that he is the teacher of the eternal recurrence, makes no reference to Heraclitus, nor elsewhere in the chapter of ancients owed and ancients not owed, where one might expect it, in paragraph 4. Furthermore, N cites the events of 1879 as the beginning of his philosophy and much of the study of Heraclitus cited by McNeil is earlier. All adds up to the conclusion that the linkage of Z's eternal recurrence to Heraclitus’s cosmology at EH/Books/BT/3, KSA 6, 313 7-12 is weak and cannot support McNeil’s strong claim about the role of Heraclitus and the Stoa in Nietzsche’s thinking about the ER as objective cosmology.  

  For reasons of the objections in the preceding three paragraphs, which are not new, Professor McNeil's book is not recommended.

    

Explain Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Eternal Return of the Same.

 Explain Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Eternal Return of the Same.

In this essay, I will argue that Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Eternal Return acts as an existential catalyst in helping us to overcome the problem of nihilism by affirming life. Along with this, I will argue that the literary style of Thus Spoke Zarathustra acts as a metaphor expressing the doctrine, illustrating it, how it affects us, and how it could change us. I will also argue that the doctrine does not need to be epistemologically true in order for it to have its intended effect. I will begin by briefly explaining how the problem of nihilism arises for Nietzsche. I will then go on to explain what the Return actually states through its first expression in The Gay Science and examine the main explicit articulations of the idea in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This will include a brief examination of interpretations of what the ‘spirit of gravity’ might actually be, as it is presented as antagonistic to the Return. 

To understand the need for the Return, it helps to briefly explain the context of Nietzsche’s thought in which it appears: in response to the problem of nihilism (nihilism being here understood as the belief that nothing has any value/meaning or the belief in something that has no value/meaning). After the death of God (proclaimed in both The Gay Science and Zarathustra), all religions and their teachings, any transcendent goals and ideas of the afterlife lose their meaning. This leaves us with nothing to believe in, hence nihilism. For Nietzsche, all followers of religion are nihilistic: they speak of God, but if there is no such being, or it has died, the religious must therefore believe in nothing, and are therefore nihilistic. 

Later in The Gay Science, we get the first mention of the Return. In an aphorism entitled ‘the greatest stress’ (depending on the translation, ‘stress’ can also be read as ‘weight’ or ‘burden’), we are given a succinct outline of the essence of the doctrine, but it is important to note how Nietzsche chooses to express it. 

This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you.

He writes this section of the text as a hypothesis and puts the actual expression of the doctrine into the mouth of a demon, inviting us to wonder: “How, if […] a demon were to sneak after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you…” This is obviously not a systematic teaching of the doctrine as fact; rather Nietzsche seems to be trying to get us to wonder how we would react if it were true by telling us a story. Perhaps through literature and narrative Nietzsche is trying to convey to us an idea not expressable in terms of logical argument.

In the Return, time is infinite, with no beginning or end, but everything in our lives return to us in exactly the same sequence an infinite number of times. Nietzsche considers how we might react to such a thought, concluding that: “If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you […] or perhaps crush you.”

We are given two alternatives here: either the thought changes us in some way (presumably positive), or it crushes us. If the latter is the case, we would not be able to surmount the following: “Do you want this once more and innumerable times more?” Would weigh upon your actions as the greatest stress.”

One reading of this could be that Nietzsche is asking us to consider this as a moral imperative, but considering his prior proclamation of the death of God in the story of the madman and the destruction of values imposed on us by religion, his proposing a new moral system seems unlikely (although he would later call for a ‘revaluation of all values’). Rather, the function of this thought when the rest of the passage is examined seems to suggest its purely existential value. “How well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this eternal confirmation and seal?”

When we consider the idea of everything returning to us infinitely, it seems like a terrible proposition. Yet Nietzsche asks how much we would have to love life and ourselves in order that we should will this on ourselves. This seems to suggest that the Return, whilst not being a moral imperative, could change how we live and how we view ourselves. If we love ourselves and life to the extent that we will nothing more than it all to happen again, infinitely, we would be able to affirm life, living better, and without religion. 

Nietzsche writes about the Return in such a literary way that we might question the seriousness of what he is trying to convey. Traditionally, philosophers express their ideas through rigorous academic texts.  It may be for this reason that Walter Kaufmann admits “most interpreters of Nietzsche’s thought have simply disregarded the recurrence,” although the fact that the idea only explicitly appears a few times in Nietzsche’s works may also have contributed to this. Kaufmann does however admit that “the symbolism of Zarathustra invites misunderstanding.”

It is true that Zarathustra is littered with rhetorical devices, metaphor and narrative, with little to no straightforward explicit exposition of philosophical ideas. Moreover, the style in which it is written seems to evoke the idea of what could be seen as a parody of religious texts, especially the Bible. However, parody might be too strong a word here, as elsewhere Nietzsche certainly displayed a certain, warped kind of respect for the Bible and the Old Testament in particular, writing:

In the Jewish ‘Old Testament’, the book of divine justice, there are men, things and speeches in so grand a style that Greek and Indian literature have nothing to compare with it. One stands in awe and reverence before these tremendous remnants of what man once was.

The most significant and explicit expression Zarathustra gives of  the Return in Thus Spoke Zarathustra comes in the form of a vision he has seen, a “vision of the loneliest”, which seems to hearken back to the ‘loneliest loneliness’ of The Gay Science. He speaks of the infinite nature of time to a dwarf, who replies (“contemptuously”): “all truth is crooked; time itself is a circle” However, the dwarf is not as struck by the idea as Zarathustra, who becomes angry that the dwarf has not fully grasped the implications of the Return, saying: “you spirit of gravity […] do not make things too easy for yourself!” Zarathustra realises that the idea, when grasped properly, is not an easy one to bear, made evident by his calling it an “abysmal thought” and says that the dwarf “could not bear it.” Zarathustra calls the dwarf ‘spirit of gravity’, implying that the persona of the dwarf could be seen as an embodiment of such. In a later section entitled ‘on the spirit of gravity’, Zarathustra says:

The man who has not yet learned to fly. Earth and life seem grave to him; and thus the spirit of gravity wants it. But whoever would become light and a bird must love himself: thus I teach.

Here Nietzsche talks of those for whom the earth and life “seem grave”: those that cannot affirm life, and that is how the spirit of gravity would have it, according to Zarathustra. N. F. Gier in his text advances a criticism of Laurence Lampert’s view of the ‘spirit of gravity.’ Lampert suggests that it is the embodiment of rationalism, i.e. the values of the primacy of reason and knowledge. Gier attacks this view, arguing that a rationalist would more likely prefer a linear view of truth and time. This seems like a flimsy criticism. It could be argued that a rationalist may see a natural perfection and mathematical beauty in the shape of a circle, and in light of Einstein’s work on relativity (which of course was not available to Nietzsche), time does not present itself as ordered and simple anymore. Furthermore, rationalism is traditionally associated with exercising restraint of bodily pleasures in the pursuit of knowledge, as is evident in the writings of Plato. Earlier in the narrative of Zarathustra, Zarathustra and his disciples come across a group of girls dancing in a forest, and Zarathustra speaks: “Do not cease dancing, you lovely girls! No killjoy has come to you with evil eyes, no enemy of girls. God’s advocate am I before the devil: but the devil is the spirit of gravity.”

It seems here that the spirit of gravity is being presented as that which is antagonistic to fun, to joy. The dancing girls seem to be an embodiment of joy in life, of affirming life, and the spirit of gravity the enemy of such pleasures. This is more evidence to suggest that rationalism is a valid way of reading what the spirit of gravity is. What we can say for certain, though, is that whatever the spirit of gravity is, if it is indeed one particular thing, is that it is hostile to affirming life, and taking joy in earthly pleasures. This compliments the dwarf’s antagonistic nature in the vision of Zarathustra, further suggesting the spirit of gravity is something to be overcome and thrown off, and the facing the Return is how we achieve this. 

There are many other references to the Return in the narrative of Zarathustra, but the prior vision seems the most significant, and I do not have the word count to do every other reference justice. I will however, make mention of one more that seems important in completing the metaphor Zarathustra’s story implies. In a later section called ‘The Seven Seals’, we find Zarathustra is no longer afraid of or shying away from, the Return, and is joyful in affirming life, though the exact nature of this affirmation remains unclear. “Oh, how should I not lust after eternity and after the nuptial ring of rings, the ring of recurrence? […] For I love you, O eternity!”

In Zarathustra, the Return is presented as being fact but obviously this is a fictional, yet philosophical narrative. Nietzsche, in his unpublished notebooks, did attempts proofs of the Return, and wrote that it must be considered “the most scientific of all possible hypotheses” The validity of such proofs and claims, I would suggest, is not a necessary consideration when the Return is considered as an existential catalyst in the face of nihilism. If we truly think on the Return, the thought can still have an effect on us whether it is true or not. Like the story of the demon we saw earlier, the thought functions in our mind as a hypothesis, as a ‘what if it were true?’ If we wonder about the possible truth of such a thing, we wonder what the consequences and implications of such a thing would be. It seems these thoughts are precisely what Nietzsche wanted to get us to consider in his published works. 

In conclusion, we have seen that for Nietzsche the Return, whether a true hypothesis or not, can, for Nietzsche, be used as a catalyst for affirming life in the face of nihilism. In Zarathustra, Nietzsche uses the narrative to illustrate different aspects of the Return, including the antagonist to it, in the form of the ‘spirit of gravity’, and two different interpretations of what the nature of the ‘spirit of gravity’ is were briefly examined. The narrative style of Zarathustra seems to function well as a metaphor for how the thought can affect us, through its story showing that even though it is not an easy thought to bear, when it is borne it helps us overcome nihilism, affirm and take joy in life. 

Bibliography

Books

‘The Portable Nietzsche’, trans. Walter Kaufmann, Penguin Books, 1976, London – contains excerpts from The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Antichrist

Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche trans. Helen Zimmern, Dover Thrift, Great Britain, 1998

‘Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist: fourth edition, Walter Kaufmann, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1974

Websites

Excerpt from N. F. Gier’s ‘Spiritual Titanism: Indian, Chinese and Western Perspectives’ –  this informs my writing on Lampert and Gier in this essay - accessed 09/01/13 - http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/riddle.htm

CARTA A MI AMIGO ULTRA-IZQUIERDISTA ANARQUISTA CHAVISTA ANTI-MADURISTA OSCAR HECK

 

Marxista Chilena, si fuera dominicana fuera una prostituta mirando para todos los lados, para ver si la estan observando, de la burguesia derechista conservadora dominicana

Hola Oscar, tu ves toda esas comidas que tu escribiste en tu ultimo articulo, https://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/a327760.html en la Republica Dominicana solamente como 10 o 20 familias pueden regularmente comprar esas comidas.  Osea un pobre o un dominicana de la clase media puede comprarla tambien pero solamente 1 dia al año, pero no regularmente. En Republica Dominicana hasta la clase media alta come muchisimos carbohidratos y poquisima comidas altas en proteinas (pollos, huevos, pescados, proteina en polvo de levantar pesas etc).  Y por comer tan poca proteina es que duran tan pocos los dominicanos.

(el cuerpo humano requiere 80 gramos a 120 gramos de proteina al dia)   

Y no solo por comer tan poca proteina, sino tambien por el estres que se pasa en Republica Dominicana, ya que el diario vivir en Rep. Dominicana es incomodisimo, ciudades feisimas, asquerosicimas, con un transito terrestre fallido y los dominicanos actuando como puros animales, no son corteses con los demas, es una sociedad barbara, ciudades mal construidas todas y con un modelo feudalista-esclavista etc

Dejame decirte algo tambien sobre la realidad dominicana, los partidos derechistas conservadores dominicanos han sido mucho mejor que los partidos social-democratas reformistas.  Asi es todo en la Republica Dominicana una pura mentira.  Los presos de Estados Unidos, Alemania, Finlandia etc. comen mejor que la clase media alta de Republica Dominicana.  En el edificios de apartamentos donde yo vivo una señora rubia blanca de la clase media alta burguesa dominicana me pidio que un pan (oye eso).  Y la mayoria de los dominicanos estan demacrados todos, feisimos, mal-formados.   Ni siquiera los gimnasios dominicanos producen cuerpos simetricos (como por ejemplo en Rusia, Polonia o en Miami (que son paraisos del fisiculturisimo y estetica corporal) ya que el estandard de vida de los dominicanos es demasiado bajo para ni siquiera la gente pensar en estar en forma y bonitas. 

Y Republica Dominicana es mucho peor que Venezuela, porque ni siquiera paginas como Aporrea de grandes intelectuales con muchisima creatividad como tu, Nicmer Evans, Javier Vivas Santana, Roland Dennis, Yuri Valecillo, El anti-Madurista Franco Orlando etc.  Son unos animales y los comunistas dominicanos son burgueses realmente reformistas-electoralistas.  y un verdadero marxista, izquierdista no puede apoyar elecciones sino una guerra armada entre los oprimidos y los opresores.  No hay muchachas bonitas aparentes metida a la politica como Eva Golinger, Camila Vallejo de Chile.  Si Eva golinger y Camila Valleja fueran dominicanas, estuvieran metidas en una vida de gozadera y discotecas y mirar para para todos los lados para ver si la estan mirando.

Y asi mismo son los dominicanos con una miradera para todos los lados para ver si lo estan mirando, es un problema mental psiquico que creo que fue importado de España (y España es un pais atrasadisimo, catalogado como el haiti de europa).  

Y por eso los dominicanos son tan brutos porque este pais es una copia al carbon de España, y la mayoria (especialmente la clase media dominicana) es super anticuada, viven en el siglo 16 de la edad media y son super-legalistas, super-religiosos, super-moralistas, y sufren de timidez, yo creo que esa timidez que padece esta raza fallida se debe a que los hogares dominicanos son dictaduras en las que los padres ejercen una tirania religiosa catolica moralista en contra de sus hijos.  Por eso los jovenes dominicanos, los muchachos y los varones dominicanos son tan conservadores en la musica, en el ropaje y en todo.  En este pais la mayoria de los jovenes ni siquiera musica rebelde se oye ni rap, ni metal ni nada de eso.  

Oye esto, Republica Dominicana es una sociedad tan moralista, anticuada y religiosa, que ni siquiera yo veo juventud con t-shirts con fotos y mensajes revolucionarios, con t-shirts con mensajes expresivos como se usan en las sociedades desarrolladas, t-shirts de Malcom x, Che Guevara, con mensajes en contra del cambio climatico, etc.  No,no, no hay nada de eso aqui.  No son expresivos los dominicanos, no hablan casi.

Yo tengo un Facebook dominicano y no lo uso porque la mayoria de los dominicanos casi no saben convertir en palabras sus dolores, sus sentimientos y su vida personal.  Cuando yo habria un tema en Facebook, ni me daban likes, ni contestaban nada, no siguen los temas.  No tienen etica de debates, etica de foros, etica y protocolo de seguir un tema en las redes sociales, etica de debates para Youtube, Twitter, Facebook etc.  Y tampoco sacan a colacion sus cosas personales, no hablan de nada, son callados, nulos secos como un palo seco, nada le huele ni nada le hiede.  Nada le molesta a esta razad dominicana (que a veces yo creo que son extraterrestres) no dicen sus cosas personales.  Tan diferente a los americanos, que son tan emotivos, que muchos de los mass-shooting que han habido en EE.U UU son causados por gente que han sido mal tratada, y se han vengado atraves de esos mass-shooting (y no por ser loco como la prensa burguesa lo dice)

yo he tenido Facebook con americanos nadamas y todos son muy simpaticos, expresivos.  Lo opuesto de los dominicanos que son secos, antipaticos, insensibles, a-politicos, idiotas, retardados mentales  

Y por eso me temo que en Republica Dominicana nunca va a venir un gobierno socialista, ni siquiera un gobierno como el de Diaz Canel, Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa, Lopez Obrador, Pepe Mujica, Nestor Kishner, Lula.  Son demasiado radicales para esta sociedad tan timida y tan religiosa.

Es como una iglesia la Rep. Dominicana. Y es lo que digo (de acuerdo con Nietzsche) que los dominicanos deberian ser malos y no bueno, y los pobres deberian de robar mas y incurrir en crimenes (como dijo Foucault y Engels en un libro).   Ya que esa naturaleza de la clase gobernadora se mala-malvada y  la clase gobernada sea buena (es realmente una conspiracion) para los ricos robarse los paises enteros mientras los pobres son mas buenos que Gandi y la madre teresa de calcuta.

Y esas comidas que tu mencionas casi nadie la puede comer aqui:  papas fritas, hamburguesas, poutine, bistek con cebollas acompañado de un montón de vegetales y ensalada y salsas de diferentes tipos, pescado frito acompañado de puré de papas y nabo, pollo horneado , pastel de carne (mi favorito), paté chinois (otro favorito), tourtiere, lasaña, maní, nueces, almendras, cereales, avena (ni me alcanza para avena), quesos de todos tipos, suizo, cheddar, y pecorino, quesos que casi todo el mundo fuera de Venezuela puede pagarse, donde existen por supuesto, aceitunas, alcaparras, ceviche (otro favorito), anchoas (mis preferidas), bagels, pan tipo baguette, o pan de centeno (mi preferido), y condimentos de todas tipos, pero no adulterados, vino tinto, como el Casillero del Diablo, cerveza fuerte, amargos de angostura, jugos de frutas, pero verdaderos y no adulterados, frutas de todos tipos, vegetales de todos tipos, maíz dulce, cretons, paté francés, terrine, samosas, uvas, pasas, dátiles, y tantas otras cosa … cochino, chicharrón, morcilla, pero sin arroz, jamón, salami, chorizo, ostras, pulpo, camarones …  

Por eso yo tambien me voy a ir otra vez a EE.UU, yo estoy esperando mi visa de residencia Estadounidense para largarme de esta dictadura plutocratica-oligarquica feudalista del Siglo 15 que es Republica Dominicana

.

QUIEN SABE SI HUBIERA SIDO MEJOR QUE AMERICA LATINA ENTERA, ESTUVIERA GOBERNADA POR GENTE RUBIA DE OJOS AZULES DE PAISES IMPERIALISTAS !!

Este comentario es sobre la migracion de venezolanos hacia EE.UU y otros paises, y yo me he dado cuenta de que ese fenomeno va desde Mexico, incluyendo America Central, y el Caribe hasta Argentina.  Porque por algo California esta llena de Mexicanos (siendo Mexico un pais rico, y Lopez Obrador es medio neoliberal, y Bukele tambien y no son soluciones para Mexico y El Salvador que son infiernos para vivir en la tierra).  Oye hermano y mucha gente hasta de la clase media se van de estos paises no porque pasan hambre ni tanto dolores. sino porque estos paises tienen un rasgo comun que es la arrabalizacion, violencia visual, fealdad en muchas areas, hacinamiento arquitectonico, hacinamiento demografico, apegamiento y hacinamiento de ciudadanos en una sola ciudad, como la capital de Mexico que tiene 22 millones de habitantes una cosa de loco de pisquiatras, quien invento a la capital Mexicana con 22 millones de gentes, en vez de ser una ciudad con solo 3 o 5 millones de personas y las otras, en las demas ciudades de Mexicos.  Asi mismo son estos paises de America Latina, con dietas altimas en carbohidratos, como Mexico que con esa cultura de comer tantos carbohidratos alminodosos y comidas de maiz, que producen obesidad, diabetes, glaucoma.   Porque lo saludable y correcto es comer dietas altas en proteinas y grasas y bajas en harinas, azucars y carbohidratos.  Y asi mismo es mi pais Rep. Dominicana hacinada, fea, arrabalizada sucia que es Rep. Dominicana.  Fijate que esos estados-naciones de Europa por mas corrupcion, maldad y problemas y pobreza que tienen mantienen a sus ciudades bien bonitas y agradables para vivir, visualmente.  Sus gobiernos no incurren en la violencia y terrorismo de mantener sus ciudades llenas de basura, feisima y suicisima como es Republica Dominicana y los demas paises de America Latina.  Quien sabe si la independencia de estos paises de America Latina fue realmente conspiraciones de burguesias y oligarquias europeas-judias locales para robarse con mas eficiencia la riqueza de estos paises, en comparacion con estos paises si hubieran sido administrados por potencias imperialistas como Inglaterra, Francia, Alemania y EE.UU

EL DERROCAMIENTO DEL CAPITALISMO ES LA UNICA FORMA DE QUE LOS DOMINICANOS VAMOS A PODER CONSEGUIR NUESTRA LIBERACION !!

Una nueva generación de defensores de la libertad se está alzando, inspirada por las victorias del pasado, para seguir en la lucha del mundo panafricano contra la hegemonía capitalista. Hay un nuevo llamamiento en contra de la destrucción de las vidas de la población negra. Como solía decir el panafricanista Tajudeen Abdul Raheem, una eminencia, siempre hay algo que hacer.

Introducción

Este año hemos celebrado el día de África el día 25 de mayo con la energía de la nueva fuerza panafricana emergente en todo el mundo que ha dejado claro que «las vidas de los negros importan» (haciendo alusión al movimiento Black Lives Matter). Desde Bahía en Brasil hasta Mogadiscio en Somalia y desde Chibok en Nigeria hasta Chicago en Estados Unidos hay nuevos tipos de organizaciones políticas que manifiestan la necesidad de proteger las vidas de la población negra. Estas nuevas formas de organización han puesto al frente nuevos militantes por la liberación y la emancipación y han generado nuevos espacios de lucha. Las viejas batallas de la liberación comprendían la lucha por el poder estatal. La nueva lucha requiere no únicamente el poder estatal, sino la lucha por el pan, la libertad y la justicia social. Algunos de los libertadores del pasado son los opresores del presente. Otros solo tienen palabrería en cuanto a la idea de la independencia africana mientras roban miles de millones que deberían estar el servicio de la sanidad y la seguridad de los trabajadores. En principio, la mayoría de los gobiernos del mundo panafricano no trabajan para liberar a la gente de las amenazas a la vida y al medio de subsistencia. Al mismo tiempo permanecen callados ante el alzamiento de un fascismo mezquino como manifiestan Donald Trump en Estados Unidos o el Frente Nacional en Francia.

Cuando se presentó por primera vez la idea de celebrar el día de África, se hizo para reconocer las intensas luchas por la dignidad que inspiraron a los ancestros africanos. Los que lucharon por la libertad empezaron por comprender que todos los grandes logros y cambios comienzan con un sueño. El sueño de una determinación propia y un África libre. Es decir, la aspiración de los africanos en cualquier parte del mundo a que África sea un lugar prospero, íntegro, pacífico y secular así como un continente gobernado por sus propios ciudadanos, que represente una fuerza dinámica en la reparación del planeta y garantice las vidas de los africanos en África y fuera de ella. Algunos líderes han utilizado este sueño para convertir la Unión Africana en un mentidero que protege las carreras políticas de los dictadores, como presenciamos con las masacres de Burundi.

No es posible celebrar el día de África en 2016 sin recordar la energía al servicio del compromiso de Tajudeen Abdul Raheem, quien dedicó su vida a la causa de la libertad humana y la dignidad africana. Hace ya 7 años desde que Tajudeen se unió a los ancestros el 25 de mayo de 2009 y no pude evitar recordar sus contribuciones a la causa de la libertad panafricana a medida que el día 25 avanzaba este año. Tajudeen se ha convertido en un personaje histórico incluido en las listas de miles de africanos que lucharon por la paz y que continúan inspirándonos. Este artículo es también un intento de recordar su contribución.

Los orígenes del día de África

Cuando en 1963 se creó un compromiso con la creación de la Organización para la Unidad Africana, se designó el día 25 de mayo como el día de África. Se pretendía que hubiera un día de celebración y apoyo a las luchas por la dignidad. La primera vez que se mencionó esta idea fue en la Conferencia de los Pueblos Africanos que tuvo lugar en Ghana en 1958. El culmen de la oposición al colonialismo y el apartheid ha sido la celebración del día de África el 25 de mayo de cada año. En la Conferencia de los Pueblos Africanos en 1958, acogida por la población de Ghana en tiempos de Kwame Nkrumah, se determinó que se destinaría un día como día nacional del recuerdo de los defensores de la libertad. La Conferencia encabezó el comienzo del día de la liberación africana (el día de África), un día para llevar la cuenta año tras año del progreso del movimiento de liberación. Un día que simboliza la determinación de los pueblos de África para liberarse de la dominación y la explotación extranjera.

Fueron los antiguos seguidores de Garvey los que comenzaron a celebrar el día de la liberación cuando vivían en el barrio neoyorquino de Harlem en Estados Unidos. Habían sacado adelante una tradición del internacionalismo negro que inspiró a Kwame Nkrumah en su época de estudiante durante la última gran crisis capitalista de Estados Unidos. Hasta 1994 el impulso de la dinámica antirracista que había puesto en marcha el alma del panafricanismo estaba motivada por el deseo de derrocar el régimen supremacista blanco sudafricano. Era sumamente importante que fueran los Estados que apoyaban la liberación africana moral, material y políticamente en los que el día 25 de mayo se celebraba a nivel nacional. La derrota militar del ejército sudafricano en la batalla de Cuito Canavale, que dio lugar al fin al apartheid en 1994, junto con la Tercera Conferencia Mundial contra el Racismo y la creación de la Unión Africana fueron los elementos que revitalizaron las fueras de la libertad Africana. Sin embargo, al final del siglo muchos de los líderes africanos renegaron de los principios de justicia reparativa justo cuando los descendientes africanos de América estaban buscando una unión con la victoria del apartheid para recuperarse internacionalmente.

Los libertadores ahora son reaccionarios

Sudáfrica era el centro de la lucha por la libertad africana después de que en 1948 un régimen de una minoría blanca comenzara con las políticas del apartheid. Para muchos, en el proceso de la liberación africana, la llegada al poder del partido Congreso Nacional Africano (ANC, por sus siglas en inglés) dirigido por Mandela supondría un nueva etapa de la revitalización de África. Veinte años más tarde, los trabajadores pobres sudafricanos se enfrentaron a un aumento de la explotación, puesto que el gobierno del ANC ha dado la espalda a los principios de libertad. El libro No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000, (Victorias que no fueron fáciles: la liberación africana y los activistas americanos durante medio siglo, 1950-2000), utiliza historias reales para presentar los diferentes movimientos que se organizaron durante medio siglo para apoyar la libertad africana [1].

A medida que los defensores de la libertad se convertían en vulgares acumuladores y adoptaron los métodos de explotación de los explotadores, la idea del día de África perdía importancia para los pobres y explotados de África. Jacob Zuma en Sudáfrica y Robert Mugabe en Zimbabue son dos de los mejores ejemplos de cómo la idea de la liberación da ahora la espalda a la gente, que busca a diario nuevas formas de reclamar su vida y su salud. La victoria más reciente, la de los mineros que trabajan en las minas de oro en Sudáfrica, recuerdan a los panafricanistas las condiciones laborales que millones de trabajadores sufren en el mundo panafricano. Mineros que padecian silicosis o tuberculosis emprendieron una acción de clase, interponiendo una demanda colectiva contra los altos productores de oro de Sudáfrica. Esta demanda colectiva recordó a los trabajadores africanos que hay múltiples frentes abiertos en la lucha por la liberación. «Una lucha, muchos frentes»; como solía decir Tajudeen, quien habló claramente de la liberación y la emancipación de los oprimidos, y destapó a los libertadores que se habían convertido en reaccionarios. En una de sus postales, que ahora se muestra en el libro Speaking Truth to Power  (diciéndole la verdad al poder), Tajudeen decía esto de los antiguos libertadores:

«¿Qué le ocurre a los revolucionarios cuando llegan al poder?… Lo han mantenido tanto tiempo que todos se han olvidado de sus antiguos trabajos, valores y visiones. Han pasado de proclamar un “cambio fundamental” a convertirse apóstoles del “No cambio”. Se han convertido en reaccionarios, revolucionarios cansados que agotan al país que dicen haber liberado. El reto al que se enfrentan en Uganda es similar al de Zimbabue, Etiopía, Eritrea y otras sociedades post-liberación: cómo liberarse de sus liberadores. Los liberadores se han convertido en reaccionarios al servicio del sistema bloqueando futuros cambios.»[2]

El mundo panafricano y la crisis global del capitalismo

Las tendencias mortales están presenten a lo largo de todo el continente. Yoweri Museveni, antiguo libertador de Uganda, ha convertido el ejército ugandés en un instrumento de opresión y en una fuerza mercenaria al servicio de los poderes imperiales. Museveni todavía se aferra al poder tras acceder a él a través de luchas armadas en 1986. Busca construir una clase capitalista autóctona consiguiendo un superávit mediante la conversión de Uganda en un petroestado. Yoweri Museveni y Pierre Nkurunziza en Burundi son falsos líderes que proyectan una imagen de sí mismos como defensores de la libertad en Somalia a la vez que oprimen a la gente en sus propias sociedades. El Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas mantiene la farsa sobre la imagen de estos líderes como defensores de la paz porque la llamada «guerra contra el terror» distrae la atención del verdadero terror económico e inseguridad al que se enfrentan los pueblos debido a la crisis capitalista global.

Tanto el pueblo ugandés como el burundés están sufriendo las relaciones económicas genocidas que han expoliado el África Central durante los últimos 50 años. La forma de capitalismo específica en África requiere fuerza y violencia todos los días. Esta ha sido la realidad desde tiempos del rey Leopoldo y Cecil Rhodes, que llega hasta nuestros días con la represión en Egipto, Etiopía, República Democrática del Congo y Kenia. Estas tendencias opresoras demuestran que la naturaleza destructiva del capitalismo está por encima de la humanidad. Desde el nacimiento del capitalismo, las relaciones con la mayoría de los pueblos africanos han estado siempre basadas en formas primitivas y brutales de acumulación. Los africanos no han tenido que esperar la crisis financiera actual para comprender las realidades de la explotación capitalista.

La evidencia de la crisis capitalista global es disfrazada con previsiones prometedoras sobre una «recuperación global». Sin embargo, los pobres del mundo están siendo testigos de una de las mayores transferencias de riqueza de los pobres al 1% de población que representan los ricos. Transferencia que se está llevando a cabo bajo la dirección política y militar de los Estados Unidos, donde los hechiceros financieros buscan nuevas formas de extraer riqueza y recuperar la soberanía limitada que se había conseguido con la independencia política. Durante más de 30 años los oprimidos en África se opusieron al Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) y a la devaluación de sus vidas. Bajo el mantra de «ajuste estructural», el FMI y el Banco Mundial han intimidado a países debilitando sus leyes laborales y suprimiendo las organizaciones de trabajadores y a los pequeños agricultores [3] para atraer «inversores extranjeros». El FMI junto con elementos compradores locales ha trabajado con los Estados para eliminar las leyes de negociación colectiva y suprimir los salarios. El mantra de la «flexibilidad laboral» del FMI ha dado el poder a las corporaciones para despedir a los trabajadores a su antojo y trasladarse a donde los salarios sean más bajos. Mientras que debilitaba las organizaciones de trabajadores, el FMI colaboraba con gobiernos para reducir drásticamente el gasto en servicios sociales como la salud, la educación o la limpieza medioambiental. Las tasas que los usuarios tienen que pagar en las clínicas públicas y los hospitales han hecho de la sanidad un servicio prohibitivo para aquellos que más lo necesitan, especialmente en un periodo de guerra bioeconómica. A medida que la expoliación capitalista se intensifica en África, las mujeres de la clase trabajadora están más explotadas que nunca debido a que las regulaciones laborales del gobierno se han reducido y los abusos en los talleres de explotación se han incrementado. Con el desmantelamiento de los servicios los espacios urbanos cada vez parecen más vertederos de basura que lugares donde los trabajadores se ganan la vida.

Hoy en día los trabajadores griegos están presenciando concretamente cómo los banqueros internacionales utilizan organizaciones como el FMI y el Banco Central Europeo para erosionar su independencia. Puertos, empresas de suministro de agua, empresas navieras, servicios públicos e incluso las islas son susceptibles de privatización para el pueblo griego con el fin de salvar a los banqueros de Francia y Alemania. Las operaciones de Wall Street dictan que ahora hay un nuevo énfasis en la liberación de la guerra financiera y el papel de los banqueros que han establecido numerosos mecanismos para saquear miles de millones de dólares de África. Las cifras publicadas por la Comisión Económica para África (UNECA por sus siglas en inglés) señalan que aproximadamente 1,4 trillones de dólares salieron de África en flujos financieros ilícitos entre 1980 y 2009. Dichas cifras sobre flujos financieros ilícitos de dinero obtenido de actividades criminales no incluye otras cifras sobre las 15 formas en las que la inversión extranjera directa (FDI por sus siglas en inglés) roba a África sus vitales excedentes [4].A los funcionarios públicos africanos no les da vergüenza robar a su propia gente. Algunos incluso se arrepienten de no haber robado lo suficiente para que sus nombres pudieran aparecer en los «papeles de Panamá», que destacan los nombres de quienes han estado saqueando los recursos de África [5]. La tarea de la liberación hoy en día incluye un refuerzo de la idea de devolver los activos robados a África.

Las Instituciones Bretton Woods y sus aliados asociados han conseguido, a través de las políticas de liberalización y privatización, dirigir la atención de la juventud africana hacia las ideas sobre el establecimiento de mercados capitales y mercados de valores financieros. Sin embargo, como la mayoría de África se ha mantenido fuera de la trampa de la deuda de las instituciones financieras internacionales, es necesario utilizar la fuerza bruta para hacerse con sus activos, como demostró la intervención de la OTAN en Libia. La crudeza de Nicholas Sarkozy, que justificó la destrucción de Libia en aras de la salvación del Euro solo ha sido superada por la complicidad de los gobiernos africanos que se han negado a organizar una mínima ofensiva diplomática de los países no alineados para sacar a la luz la recolonización y la destrucción de Libia.

Economistas como Samir Amin o Michael Hudson han escrito sobre las finanzas como una nueva forma de guerra y la realidad de que los magnates financieros de Nueva York, Londres, Frankfurt, París y Tokyo perpetúan el mismo objetivo que la conquista militar: llegar a controlar la tierra, las infraestructuras básicas y recaudar tributos. No es necesario conquistar un país, ni siquiera ser propietario de su tierra, recursos naturales o infraestructura si se le puede quitar el superávit económico de forma financiera. Lo que antes se conseguía con sangre y armas ahora puede obtenerse mediante los beneficios de la deuda [6].

Las intervenciones militares como la de Libia, Somalia o Nigeria ocurren para desestabilizar a los pueblos de África, puesto que los africanos no han sido seducidos del todo por las ventajas de la deuda. Dicha desestabilización se hace en nombre de la lucha contra el terror y los terroristas en África. Por eso, instituciones como el Comando África de Estados Unidos (AFRICOM) y la OTAN se ven ahora como obstáculos para la liberación africana.

El renacimiento del racismo, el chauvinismo y patrioterismo en el contexto de la crisis capitalista

En el día de la liberación africana de 2016 todo el mundo mira de reojo el aumento del racismo y la islamofobia en Estados Unidos. Desde la crisis financiera de 2008, las clases trabajadoras blancas de EEUU han estado buscando formas de recuperar el privilegio de los blancos en vez de concentrarse en los banqueros y depredadores financieros que los han sumergido en una pobreza más profunda. El aumento de la desigualdad está afectando ahora a la clase blanca trabajadora y fue en esta lucha donde Donald Trump entró promoviendo resentimiento anti-inmigración, nativo e islamófobo. De los dos principales partidos políticos de EEUU, el Partido Republicano, tuvo éxito desde 1968 en privar a los negros de voto y promover políticas racistas. Estas fueron abiertamente expuestas con todo lujo de detalles en la «estrategia sureña». Tras la elección de Obama en 2008, los republicanos formaron una nueva formación racista llamada el Tea Party, del que han surgido senadores neoconservadores como Ted Cruz. De esta contra revolución surgieron 17 aspirantes a la candidatura del partido republicano a la presidencia. Entre estos 17 se encontraba el agente inmobiliario multimillonario Donald Trump.

En el día de África de este año Trump recibió los votos suficientes para ser nominado como el candidato por el partido republicano para la presidencia de Estados Unidos en las próximas elecciones. La trayectoria de Trump está marcada por la misoginia, el racismo y la celebración de la supremacía de los blancos. Tras la elección de Barack Obama como presidente de EEUU, Trump alimentó las ideas que tenía el Tea Party sobre que Obama no era ciudadano estadunidense. El eslogan de su campaña reza «Haremos de Estados Unidos una nación grande otra vez» (Make America Great Again). Trump persigue el imposible objetivo de hacer de Estados Unidos un país blanco de nuevo. La celebración de la supremacía de los blancos se ha avivado otra vez, mientras que las clases blancas trabajadoras deberían centrarse en las clases capitalistas que se han hecho más ricas expropiando millones de casas.

Muchos a lo largo del mundo panafricano no conocen más sobre la historia de Trump que su incursión como personaje de reality show televisivo. El mismo Donald Trump que apoyó la pena de muerte para cinco jóvenes negros a los que se había acusado injustamente de violación en la ciudad de Nueva York. Donald Trump avivó un histerismo racista sobre violadores negros y compró una página entera de un periódico con un anuncio que pretendía conseguir que los cinco adolescentes murieran por un delito que no cometieron. Fue el gran esfuerzo de panafricanistas como Elob Brath para demostrar la inocencia de los cinco chicos (cuatro afroamericanos y un latinoamericano, todos menores de edad), que habían sido incriminados por el departamento de policía de Nueva York por la violación y el tratamiento brutal a una mujer blanca en un caso infame llamado «Central Park Jogger» (La corredora de Central Park) en 1989. El Departamento de Policía de Nueva York obligó a los jóvenes a confesar por la fuerza en medio de una campaña racista alentada por Donald Trump y los medios corporativos. Los hombres fueron exonerados fonalmente en 2002, cuando un violador convicto confesó el ataque de Central Park.

Elombe Brath era uno de los panafricanistas en el área de Nueva York que, durante más de 50 años, había encabezado la celebración de actividades en el día de la liberación de África. La actividad de Brath formaba parte de un movimiento político más amplio mediante el que los trabajadores negros e indios en el área de Nueva York habían estado al frente de la actividad anti imperialista. Hemos hecho mención anteriormente a los antiguos seguidores de Garvey, que se habían organizado en Estados Unidos, junto con Malcolm X, que apareció a finales de los 50 en plataformas de liberación negra. Cuando Malcolm X falleció en 1965 su obra había impulsado entre los pobres, no solo entre los negros, la formación del Socialist Workers Party que aseguraba que Malcolm X era socialista [7].Lo que nos interesa para el día de África 2016 es que en la lucha antirracista en EEUU, revolucionarios como Malcolm X, James Boggs, Grace Boggs, y otros entendieron el papel crucial de los trabajadores negros en la lucha contra el capitalismo. Las tradiciones de Malcolm X siguen con una fuerte vigencia en área de Nueva York. Para que alguien como Donald Trump haya surgido de ese entorno se ha necesitado a la sociedad estadounidense completa, en la que las ideas eugenésicas y la jerarquía racial tienen más prominencia para que Trump emerja como líder.

Donald Trump ha seguido con su racismo nacional e internacional haciendo un llamamiento para que se deporte a 11 millones de trabajadores inmigrantes y para que se construya un muro entre Estados Unidos y México. Durante doscientos años, la sociedad estadounidense se construyó sobre la explotación a gran escala de la vida de los negros. Ahora, en medio de la crisis capitalista ha surgido un nuevo movimiento en pro de las vidas de los negros (#Black Lives Matter) contra los asesinatos cometidos por la policía y el profundo racismo del capitalismo en Estados Unidos.

El movimiento para la liberación negra (Black Liberation Movement) en Estados Unidos bajo el mando de un nuevo cuadro de revolucionarios en el movimiento #Black Lives Matter están destapando la militarización de los espacios urbanos en Estados Unidos, que se habían ocultado hablando sobre democracia y libertad. Las ideas fascistas abundan en EEUU, pero la posición estratégico de la clase trabajadora negra y de piel oscura en la economía ha debilitado las posibilidades para el completo desarrollo de un partido fascista. El movimiento Occupy Wall Street (Ocupa Wall Street) deslegitimó la idea liberal dominante en la sociedad de que cualquier cosa podía conseguirse si se trabaja duro. Lo que dificulta que la derecha se consolide políticamente en Estados Unidos es la alianza entre negros y latinos con las secciones progresistas de las clases trabajadoras, la sección progresista de los movimientos LBGTI, sectores progresistas de los movimientos de mujeres, los movimientos por la paz y los movimientos por la justicia medio ambiental.

En la última crisis capitalista, cuando el fascismo se apoderó de Europa, el aumento de las ideas racistas inundó el continente con partidos que compartían las ideas de Trump y que recibían un gran apoyo de la clase trabajadora blanca europea. Cuanto más profunda es la crisis, más indignantes son las posiciones del populismo de derechas como el Partido de la Libertad de Austria, el Partido Popular de Dinamarca, el Frente Nacional en Francia, UKIP en Inglaterra, el Partido, el Partido por la Libertad de Holanda, Amanecer Dorado en Grecia, la Alianza Nacional en Italia que compite con la Liga Norte y el Partido Nacional Democrático alemán.

Las clases trabajadoras europeas han llegado a un punto en el que tienen que elegir entre apoyar a las clases gobernantes racistas o luchar por sus derechos. El día de África 2016 coincidió con movimientos masivos de trabajadores en Francia y Bélgica donde cientos de miles de personas se echaron a las calles para protestar en contra de la austeridad, los despidos masivos y la guerra. Los tres bancos más importantes de Francia han quedado muy expuestos por la gran crisis financiera actual. Durante el último año, el gobierno ha incitado a la histeria anti-inmigración utilizando el miedo para separar a los trabajadores blancos y negros en Europa [8]. Los medios europeos han utilizado los retos presentados por los refugiados con la guerra y la destrucción en el Este asiático como distracción mientras las clases capitalistas llevaban a cabo ataques masivos a los derechos de los trabajadores y otros derechos básicos como el derecho a un sueldo digno.

Las clases gobernantes europeas tienen miedo, especialmente de la clase obrera organizada en Francia. Durante 50 años el statu quo en Francia saqueó África y Francia sigue movilizando los recursos de 14 Estados africanos para apoyar estatus como gran potencia. Tras la intervención de la OTAN en Libia, las intervenciones francesas en Mali y la República Centroafricana, los gobernantes franceses esperaban que el racismo fuera suficiente para adormecer la militancia de los trabajadores franceses explotados. En mayo de 2016 se demostró que el estado de emergencia creado en Francia y Bélgica poco después de los ‘ataques terroristas’ de noviembre de 2015 no tenía como primer objetivo las redes terroristas islámicas, sino una potencial movilización de trabajadores. Uno de los retos actuales será que el movimiento de justicia reparativa desarrolle una alianza clara con los sectores progresistas de la clase trabajadora para mitigar el crecimiento del Frente Nacional a la vez que se oponen al imperialismo francés en África. El día de la Liberación de Áfirca 2016 también fue otra ocasión para recuperar la demanda a Francia de terminar con el dominio neocolonial en África, Caribe y Oceanía.

El golpe de estado en Brasil y su significado para la liberación africana

Desde Haití hasta Venezuela y desde Honduras hasta Bahía, las luchas de los afrodescendientes demandan solidaridad a todo el mundo panafricano. Cuando la Conferencia de los Pueblos Africanos se convocó en Accra en 1958, el tema de la independencia de Puerto Rico ocupaba uno de los primeros puestos en la agenda del movimiento panafricanista. Hoy, la gente de Puerto Rico pide solidaridad por la opresión intensificada que sufren por parte de los banqueros de Wall Street, que quieren que la gente se muera de hambre mientras que los accionistas en Nueva York siguen cobrando. La gente de Puerto Rico, junto con la de La Martinica, Cayenne, La Guadalupe y las otras 20 colonias están haciendo un llamamiento para que se ponga fin al antiguo concepto del dominio colonial. Esto es un recordatorio para todos los pueblos de que mientras un territorio esté bajo dominio colonial todos los pueblos están amenazados por la dominación extranjera.

En 2016 los ciudadanos de Haití buscaron profundizar su compromiso con la Unión Africana como método para llamar la atención sobre un movimiento anti-haitiano en la región. Especialmente por los exitosos esfuerzos de los líderes de la República Dominicana que negaron la ciudadanía a decenas de miles de dominicanos con ascendencia haitiana creando el mayor grupo de población apátrida del hemisferio occidental. Los miembros de las comunidades africanas de las dos Américas están llamando a la solidaridad frente a una ola intensificada anti-negritud. Mientras que la comunidad del Caribe pidió solidaridad con la gente de Haití, la Unión Africana negó su solicitud de unirse a la UA. Los mismos líderes que decidieron agraciar a los líderes de Ruanda con que albergue la reunión de la UA en Kigali (Ruanda), fracasaron abiertamente en apoyar la lucha de los haitianos. De este modo la Unión Africana ha entrado en un turbio debate sobre quién es africano, negando la plataforma sobre la que se habían acordado los fundamentos de la OUA (Organización para la Unidad Africana) que estipulaban que la Unión Africana se creaba para conseguir una mayor unidad y solidaridad entre los países africanos y los pueblos de África tanto en casa como en el extranjero.

Sin embargo, es en Brasil donde los supremacistas blancos han salido con fuerza a actuar para quitar el poder al gobierno electo de Dilma Roussef del Partido de los Trabajadores. Brasil constituye la sociedad de las Américas con el mayor número de población africana fuera de África. La población afrodescendiente en Brasil es de más de 120 millones, de una población estimada de 204 millones de personas. Durante 300 años, las clases capitalistas practicaron las peores formas de economía genocida, que han sido encuviertas con el concepto de «democracia racial». Los afrobrasileños han estado luchando desde diferentes frentes por sus derechos básicos y ha sido en este siglo cuando han empezado a conseguir apoyo internacional tras la conferencia mundial de la ONU en Durban [Sudáfrica] contra el Racismo, la Discriminación Racial, la Xenofobia y las Formas Conexas de Intolerancia. Los afrobrasileños habían apostado por el Partido de los Trabajadores de Lula en 2002 y, desde entonces, la sociedad se embarcó en mínimas reformas para poner fin a las formas más explícitas de racismo y asesinatos cometidos por la policía. Es en el continente americano donde la cuestión de la liberación está ahora ligada con las reparaciones y la justicia reparativa.

A pesar de la gran incursión diplomática en África durante los últimos 20 años a cargo de empresas de construcción y energía brasileñas, la realidad es que millones de brasileños negros viven en las condiciones más miserables en las favelas (barrios muy pobres). Las estadísticas nacionales de Brasil no pueden revelar la profundidad de la explotación y el estado de violencia contra los negros que se produce diariamente. El sistema educativo está organizado para oprimir a los negros. Menos del 4% de los afrobrasileños tienen acceso a la educación superior. Los medios en Brasil son vehículo de reproducción de ideas eugenésicas con las ahora tan famosas «novelas» que promueven la estética blanca y la pureza.

En los últimos 14 años el Partido de los Trabajadores (PT) ha puesto en marcha reformas para mejorar las condiciones de los brasileños más pobres (los negros, los mulatos y los indígenas). Los sueldos mínimos han aumentado en un 70 por ciento durante el gobierno del PT, que también ha buscado la forma de aumentar los servicios sociales con programas de transferencia de efectivo como Bolsa Familia (una ayuda social básica). Los gobiernos de Lula y Rousseff comenzaron una gran expansión de las oportunidades educativas que incluyeron un programa dirigido a hacer que la educación superior sea accesible para los afrobrasileños. Fue una verdadera contradicción escuchar las reclamaciones de «discriminación positiva» en Brasil cuando lo que se necesitaba era una completa reforma y reconstrucción de la sociedad para que pudiera cubrir las necesidades de la mayoría de la gente. A pesar de esta contradicción, los arraigados capitalistas blancos se sentían amenazados por cualquier movimiento encaminado a desmantelar el legado de las estructuras del estado genocida de Brasil.

El PT llegó al poder en 2002 y comenzó a hacer reformas mientras mantenía el modelo de acumulación de capital de Brasil intacto. Estas reformas se concebían como una amenaza a la seguridad y al poder de las clases capitalistas. Los extremistas brasileños, aprovechándose de la crisis capitalista en Brasil, se movilizaron para echar del poder a Dilma Rousseff quien había sido reelegida en 2014. (Una de las imágenes más representativas que circuló por las redes sociales durante las manifestaciones contra Rousseff fue una en la que aparecía una pareja blanca manifestándose contra el gobierno del PT con su bebé al que la criada negra, vestida con uniforme, llevaba en un carrito detrás de ellos) [9].

El gobierno del PT ha sido expulsado del poder mientras que los juicios de impugnación están en marcha. El golpe de estado en Brasil es uno de los ejemplos más claros de la necesidad de movilización en pro de una comprensión de las alianzas negras con los sectores progresistas de trabajadores organizados, en la lucha contra el capitalismo del siglo XXI. Poco a poco va quedando claro que únicamente con la movilización a gran escala de los brasileños negros en alianza con la clase trabajadora se podrá conseguir el retroceso de las fuerzas neofascistas en Brasil.

También es este el caso de Venezuela, donde el legado del experimento bolivariano está amenazado por las fuerzas radicales conservadoras. La crisis social y económica en Venezuela, como la lucha en Brasil, apuntan a la realidad de que no se puede retar al capitalismo en América Latina sin un ataque frontal al racismo blanco y a las ideas de los colonizadores que mataron a millones de negros e indígenas, primeros pueblos de la Nación [10].

Educar a los jóvenes en las victorias del pasado con el fin de movilizarlos para la transformación del sistema social

En todo el mundo panafricano los panafricanistas conscienttes aprovecharon la ocasión del día de África para recordarle a la juventud las victorias de los pueblos de África contra los colonizadores italianos en 1896 en Adwa [Etiopía]. Era relevante que, para la celebración del día de África que llevó a cabo la fuerza progresista de Sudáfrica, el enfoque estuviera en la importancia del conocimiento indígena para la transformación de África y la necesidad de que todo el mundo entienda la importancia de las batallas de 1896 entre los italianos y los africanos en Adwa. La victoria contra el colonialismo se repitió también en la última crisis en 1935 cuando las fuerzas de Etiopía hicieron retroceder a las fuerzas de Benito Mussolini. Esta victoria inspiró el movimiento panafricano a escala global y el movimiento rastafari surgió como una gran fuerza panafricana.

Las victorias etíopes garantizaron que los pueblos de Etiopía disfrutaran de su independencia en la era del colonialismo abierto europeo. A medida que se refrescaban estas memorias, también se pidió solidaridad con los trabajadores etíopes y los agricultores pobres que están sufriendo la expropiación de su tierra y comunidades por parte de elementos de las élites gobernantes actuales. Los trabajadores pobres y los pequeños agricultores de Oromia están sufriendo el impacto del chauvinismo de las clases capitalistas etíopes. A falta de un movimiento fuerte de la clase trabajadora que movilice a los trabajadores más allá de las líneas religiosas, étnicas o regionales, los que ocupan el poder utilizan el chauvinismo religioso y étnico para mitigar las exigencias justas de los trabajadores en todos los sectores de la economía. Los trabajadores y pequeños agricultores de Etiopía han hecho un llamamiento a todos los panafricanistas progresistas del mundo para sacar a la luz estas formas de expropiación. La clase dirigente de Etiopía no puede jactarse de albergar la sede de la Unión Africana mientras reprimen a su propio pueblo. Las mujeres etíopes, como cientos de mujeres de África del Este, son enviadas a la Península Arábiga para trabajar en condiciones de semiesclavitud. Un liderazgo militar y patriarcal en Etiopía ha hecho muy poco para poner fin a este comercio de pequeñas esclavas con Arabia Saudita y Emiratos Árabes.

Este año se celebró el día de África justo cuando la cuestión sobre la vida de los negros tenía más prioridad que el futuro de los líderes políticos. Un vibrante optimismo panafricano está siendo impulsado a lo largo y ancho de todo el mundo panafricano, por líderes culturales, mientras que los Estados utilizan el sistema de educación para confundir a la juventud. Estuve hace poco en Abidjan, y pude experimentar de primera mano el importante espíritu revolucionario de los líderes culturales como Tiken Jah. Los artistas de reggae de todo el mundo panafricano han demostrado creatividad y lo que se puede hacer con innovación tecnológica. Mientras que escuchaba a Tiken Jah Fakoly y a Julian Marley en el Abi Reggae Festival, estaba presenciando las nuevas energías de la liberación que ahora emanan de los que no están sobornados por Francia. La interpretación de Africa Unite hecha por Julian Marley desgrana la esencia de la xenofobia y el chauvinismo que existen ahora entre las elites gobernantes en África. La iniciativa para una acción sensata y para la paz está proveniendo de personas que no tienen interés en el poder o la dominación política.

Sin embargo, en Burundi, Somalia, Sudan y la República Centroafricana las cuestiones sobre la paz y la reconstrucción han sido acalladas por dictadores mezquinos que se benefician de la división del pueblo.

El debate sobre la liberación y la paz en África ha estado dominado por intentos de reconciliar las fuerzas políticas que entienden el proceso de paz como otra forma de consolidar la lucha por el poder político. El Consejo de Paz y Seguridad de la Unión Africana ha tratado a los africanos hasta ahora como víctimas silenciosas e indefensas que no tienen un papel en la reconstrucción. Los medios internacionales y los gobiernos han hecho hincapié en la importancia de las agencias de las Naciones Unidas y las oenegés internacionales.

Siempre hay algo que hacer

El aislamiento de los pueblos de África por parte de la Unión Africana en temas de paz y educación se manifiesta de muchas formas. Existe una carencia de información sobre el verdadero significado de intervenciones militares externas para luchar contra el «terror». Esta campaña de desinformación sobre las verdaderas causas del terror no hace más que reforzarse con los fondos que envían los think-tanks internacionales para quedarse de entre toda la juventud, con los más brillantes, para que busquen trabajo en ONGs internacionales. Los que no están atrapados en el trabajo con agencias externas se inclinan hacia nuevas formas de fundamentalismo mediante las que la juventud busca la salvación oprimiendo a los otros. Tajudeen Abdul Raheem, cuyos restos descansan en Funtua, Nigeria, se estará revolviendo en la tumba al ver que no hemos sido más directos en dejar en evidencia y oponernos a elementos como Boko Haram. El aumento del fundamentalismo en el mundo es, en muchos niveles, un intento de los pueblos para desarrollar nuevos valores culturales y espirituales. Desafortunadamente, en el intento de desarrollar puntos de referencia espirituales hay algún que otro fanático que desarrolla religiones y expresiones religiosas para dominar y explotar los valores espirituales de otros africanos. Estos elementos generan formas radicales de intolerancia en el proceso de celebración de la espiritualidad y de sus valores. Tenemos el espectáculo de fundamentalistas cristianos, musulmanes e hindúes, que manifiestan su intolerancia en le proceso de elaboración de sus valores espirituales.

Desde la base, las mujeres africanas están al frente del desarrollo de nuevas teorías de liberación africana. Señalan la realidad de que la presión de las fuerzas políticas sobre las guerras del Estado ignora la causa de una violencia incluso mayor, la violencia estructural de la explotación, la violencia social que sufren los explotados y la violencia doméstica que sufren las mujeres. En este sentido, el día de la liberación africana tiene lugar a la vez que fuerzas radicales como Asma Mafhouz surgen en todas las sociedades de África para desarrollar nuevas formas de auto organización y expresión propia. Hay nuevas formas de organización surgiendo poco a poco y sigilosamente. No es casualidad que las fuerzas que lideran el movimiento #Black Lives Matter en Estados Unidos estuvieran formadas por personas transgénero que han dejado claro que la homofobia es incompatible con la liberación africana.

Tajudeen, como C.L.R. James, defendía que siempre se puede hacer algo. Este año, la crisis capitalista está reqiriendo la presencia de nuevas técnicas de rebelión y organización en un momento en el que la juventud proclamaba que el fascismo no se apoderaría de este periodo. La popularidad de Trump es la reacción a la elección de Obama. Lo que cada vez está más claro desde la candidatura de Hilary Clinton es que las principales organizaciones políticas como el Partido Demócrata no pueden ser vehículo de respeto para las vidas de los negros. La juventud del movimiento #Black Lives Matter ha recordado a la sociedad que fueron Bill y Hilary Clinton los que se refirieron a los jóvenes negros como violentos depredadores. Por lo tanto, en el día de África 2016 muchos jóvenes negros habían perdido la esperanza de que la política electoral pudiera cambiar el sistema social. Tanto en Estados Unidos, como en África como en Latino América. En 1963, la mayoría de los países africanos y latinoamericanos estaban gobernados por dictadores. Hoy en día no tanto, pero el capital está demostrando que los gobiernos llegan a tomar medidas despiadadas para asegurar la supervivencia del capitalismo.

Lecciones aprendidas del ébola

Los problemas de guerra biológica y destrucción medioambiental no suelen tratarse en las celebraciones de la liberación africana. Sin embargo, el dramático brote de ébola en Guinea, Liberia y Sierra Leona puso de manifiesto la necesidad de una respuesta panafricana a las crisis de salud. El ébola, el VIH y el sida, la destrucción medioambiental y la quema de gas han puesto sobre la mesa la cruda realidad de que van a ser necesarias soluciones panafricanas que vayan más allá de los estados berlinistas, [estados creados artificialmente por los poderes coloniales europeos en Berlin], forjados sobre las comunidades africanas en 1884. En Estados Unidos, los trabajadores negros de Louisiana han liderado la lucha contra el racismo medio ambiental y han conseguido que las comunidades blancas de la parroquia de St. James se dieran cuenta de que el pasillo industrial del río Mississippi (también conocido como Pasillo del Cáncer) no discriminaba cuando los capitalistas estaban destruyendo el medio ambiente [11].

La crisis capitalista global ha dejado claro que los africanos no pueden reestructurar sus economías sin un cambio fundamental en el poder global. En este momento, los descendientes de africanos tienen la autoridad moral de oponerse al capitalismo y a través del Movimiento Global de Reparaciones (Global Reparations movement) exigen una justicia reparativa y una reestructuración del sistema económico internacional. Este llamamiento a un Nuevo Orden Económico Internacional ya fue apoyado por  líderes como Julius Nyerere, que defendió la causa de la lucha contra la deuda odiosa de África. Es en estados como Nigeria, Sudáfirca, Egipto o República Democráitca del Congo, donde hay enormes clases trabajadoras, donde el capitalismo se esfuerza más por dividir a los pobres en base a regionalismos, etnias o religión. Se necesita un nuevo cuadro de luchadores por la libertad que se opongan a los líderes actuales africanos, quienes han demostrado ser cómplices del saqueo del continente. Se necesitan nuevas formas de organización para cumplir con las nuevas condiciones.

En 1959, cuando Malcolm X organizó el día de la liberación africana en Harlem, tanto la élite gobernante estadounidense como los líderes negros que habían sido absorvidos por esa élite, rechazaron sus ideas. Malcolm X iba muy por delante de su tiempo. Comprendió que la lucha por los derechos civiles en Mississippi no podía separarse de la lucha por la libertad en el Congo. Elomb Brath comprendió que la lucha por las vidas de los jóvenes en el caso «Central Park jogger» no podía separarse de la lucha por la liberación de Nelson Mandela en Sudáfrica o de mostrar solidaridad con el pueblo cubano recibiendo a Fidel Castro en Harlem.

Tanto en Bahía, Brasil, o en Ferguson, Missouri, el grito que el movimiento #BlackLivesMatter está llevando hacia delante es una nueva llamada a la unión para oponerse a la destrucción global de las vidas de los negros y de las comunidades negras. Algunos planes para la organización del mundo bajo la hegemonía de Estados Unidos no han sido considerados aptos, porque la lucha panafricana global siempre ha puesto en evidencia el saqueo y la destrucción del imperio. Los asesinatos masivos de negros en Estados Unidos dificultan que el Comando África de Estados Unidos promueva la mentira de que los militares estadounidenses están en África para proteger las vidas de los negros.

En la era de la cultura del consumo de Occidente y los inmorales valores de avaricia y corrupción, las formas de religión africana y otras formas de espiritualidad se presentan como formas de expresión propia. Los africanos y otros oprimidos quieren identificarse con valores espirituales que proporcionen una base para la emancipación y la redención. Las costumbres, los valores y las tradiciones africanas se están interpretando de modo que se puedan contraponer a la dominación cultural de occidente. Sin embargo, en muchos casos, hay quienes explotan los valores espirituales para promover formas organizadas y expresiones religiosas que también son opresoras. El fundamentalismo africano existe y está manipulado por varias fuerzas que, de momento, no tienen medios para causar daño como otros fundamentalismos.

Los valores espirituales de auto confianza, amor, redención y liberación son valores que pueden dar rienda suelta a la creatividad de los africanos para desarrollar nuevas formas de organización y conceptualización de la sociedad. La tarea es encontrar nuevas formas de armonizar las relaciones entre los seres humanos y entre los seres humanos y la naturaleza. África es un continente rico. Hasta el momento la concepción de los líderes africanos ha sido movilizar los recursos y las materias primas según las demandas de Europa.

Las luchas por la liberación africana en 2016 son parte de una lucha global por un nuevo sistema social que vaya más allá del capitalismo. Es importante aprender de los logros para inspirar a las nuevas generaciones a seguir alzando la antorcha de la libertad.