"COMMODITY FETISHISM" AND THOREAU (EL "FETICHISMO DE LA MERCANCÍA" Y THOREAU)

 

INDEPENDENCE IS NOT A COMMODITY BUT, CETERIS PARIBUS, THE CHEAPEST AND IRREPLACEABLE INDIVIDUDUAL'S WEALTH, AND -WHEN ADDED- THE MOST NEEDED AND EXPENSIVE COMMONS FOR ANY SOCIETY

 

YOU CAN HAVE BOTH SOCIETY AND COMMODITIES BUT NEVER WITHOUT INDEPENDENCE AND INDEPENDENCE DRIVEN COMMONS 

 

"FREE RIDERS" RIDE ON BOTH: OTHER'S INDEPENDENCE AND THE COMMONS. THAT IS GARRETT HARDIN'S "TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS"

SHICKEL.(…)¿Hasta dónde puede metamorfosearse un ser humano?

 

CANETTI. Tal vez debería decir primero que yo reconozco el origen del ser humano en su capacidad para metamorfosearse. La diferencia entre el hombre y el animal no empieza para mí con el trabajo, una conjetura que usted sin duda conoce, sino que se remonta hasta mucho, mucho más atrás.

 

SHICKEL. En eso está usted en los antípodas de Marx

 

CANETTI. Ciertamente. Yo situaría el origen del hombre en una época muy anterior a la prehistoria, una época que aún no podemos documentar con objetos, o tal vez sólo con unos cuantos objetos aislados. Creo que el hombre es un ser metamorfoseante par excellence y que llegó a ser hombre gracias a su capacidad de metamorfosearse en los animales que poblaban su entorno.

 

(Conversación con Joaquim Shickel, 1972, Obra completa IX, traducción Juan José del Solar)

 

LA INDEPENDENCIA NO ES UNA MERCANCÍA, PERO ES, CETERIS PARIBUS, LA RIQUEZA INDIVIDUAL MÁS BARATA E INSUSTITUIBLE, ASÍ COMO EL BIEN DEL COMÚN MÁS CARO Y NECESARIO

Por esta razón, los estándares de vida bajos desplazan a los altos 

LAS "ÉLITES" OCCIDENTALES CREEN, COMO SI DE UNA RELIGIÓN SE TRATARA, QUE SUS ESTÁNDARES DE VIDA ACTUALES NO PUEDEN SER DESPLAZADOS POR OTROS MÁS BAJOS Y CON MÁS ÉXITO.LOS CONSIDERAN ETERNOS EN SUS MANOS

 

June 23. We Yankees are not so far from right, -who answer one question by asking another. Yes and No are lies. A true answer will not aim to establish anything, but rather to set all well afloat . All answers are in the future, and day answereth to day. Do we think we can anticipate them ?

In Latin, to respond is to pledge one's self before the gods to do faithfully and honorably, as a man should, in any case. This is good.

Music soothes the din of philosophy and lightens incessantly over the heads of sages.

How can the language of the poet be more expressive than nature? He is content that what he has already read in simple characters, or indifferently in all, be translated into the same again. '

He is the true artist whose life is his material; every stroke of the chisel must enter his own flesh and bone and not grate dully on marble.

The Springs .-What is any man's discourse to me if I am not sensible of something in it as steady and cheery-is the creak of the crickets ? In it the woods must be relieved against the sky. Men tire me -,when I am not constantly greeted and cheered in their discourse, as it were by the flux of sparkling streams .

I cannot see the bottom of the sky, because I cannot see to the bottom of myself. It is the symbol of my own infinity. My eye penetrates as far into the ether as that depth is inward from which my contemporary thought springs.

Not by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but by abandonment, and childlike mirthfulness. If you would know aught, be gay before it.

HDT

(Journal, June 23 1840)

 

 

Such a life is useful for us to contemplate as suggesting that a man is not to be measured by the virtue of his described actions, or the wisdom of his expressed thoughts merely, but by that free character he is, and is felt to be, under all circumstances. Even talent is respectable only when it indicates a depth of character unfathomed. Surely it is better that our wisdom appear in the constant success of our spirits than in our business, or the maxims which fall from our lips merely. We want not only a revelation, but a nature behind to sustain it. Many silent, as well as famous, lives have been the result of no mean thought, though it was never adequately expressed nor conceived; and perhaps the most illiterate and unphilosophical mind may yet be accustomed to think to the extent of the noblest action. We all know those in our own circle who do injustice to their entire character in their conversation and in writing, but who, if actually set over against us, would not fail to make a wiser impression than many a wise thinker and speaker.

(…)

But, alas! What is Truth? That which we know not. What is Beauty? That which we see not. What is Heroism? That which we are not. It is in vain to hang out flags on a day of rejoicing — fresh bunting, bright and whole; better the soiled and torn remnant which has been borne in the wars.

 

(HTD, Sir Walter Raleigh)