Tipografía: Dejavu Sans Mono
https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/
At what point did this stop being funny, if it ever was? The original idea was simple: choose a theme, create a logo and write a few jokes about that theme. At what point did it go awry? I was clear that I didn’t want to do something controversial or transgressive, I wanted a calm and reflective sense of humor. And I find myself, I think, with two problems: what I think is funny I don’t think is really funny, it’s something like “I know it’s not funny but it’s funny to me” and what I do think may be funny, I’m ashamed to write it, but I don’t know if it’s because I consider it a simplistic nonsense (funny, yes, but simplistic nonsense after all), or because I don’t want to be taken for a simple lout. Maybe that’s the point in all cases: that I’m just a simple lout but I don’t want everyone to know it. And what does all this have to do with evolution? Well, it has to do with what happens to me every time I do something: that the final result is “the least important thing”. Yes, yes, I know, all that stuff about enjoying the road, the journey is the end… but no, there is something else. And I think that the final result is not totally authentic because it has gone through too many filters, my own filters: of what I consider what is understood and what is not understood, if it is well spun or not well spun, if there is coherence or not coherence… when my intention was to do something more organic, more alive.
Well, do it organic, don’t filter, you will say. And you say well but… but I don’t see much sense in launching ideas, phrases, unconnected situations, with characters lacking coherence, unintelligible… because precisely the challenge is to get a text, a graphic, a vignette where everything fits together but without all the pieces are there. Maybe I should start by making puzzles with all the pieces and with few pieces. Surely my problem is that I am not clear which are the fundamental pieces of the puzzle and which are the accessory ones. It’s like drawing a triangle on top of a rectangle and next to it, another triangle on top of another rectangle (something that almost everyone would interpret as two houses) and wanting people to interpret one as a house and the other as an envelope. So I am going to put a square at the top left of the envelope as a seal. Well, that can be confused with a window. Why don’t you put a door, or a chimney, or several windows to the house? Or some lines as an address to the envelope? But that’s another problem, I think I’m also afraid of being obvious, I try with too much effort to look like an original point of view and that also makes the result confusing. And you will say, ok, whatever you want, but evolution, didn’t you come here to talk about evolution?
Evolution, evolution. Yes, I was coming to talk about evolution but… I don’t know if I’m quite clear about what evolution is. Is all transformation evolution? Does negative evolution exist? Is growing, understood as increasing in size, evolution? What if by evolving we are not adapting to live but preparing to die? Everything indicates that human beings will become extinct and that should not be a drama. What is a drama is that we ourselves are the ones who accelerate the process. And what is really happening is that a few people are wasting the present of many and sacrificing the future of all because… I don’t know why. I really don’t know. Imagine you have some cold beers inside a fridge that has just broken down. A friend will arrive in 5 hours to help you move some furniture and drink those beers. What would you do? Do you drink the beers before they warm up without your friend having arrived? Would you try to get a repairman to come over on a Saturday to fix the fridge? Would you ask your neighbor if he could store the beers for you and ask him to join you later? Surely you can think of more options for you and your friend to enjoy those cold beers. There will be people who don’t give the slightest importance to beers and there will be people who would kill even their friend to have more beer after he helped him out. Yes, yes, I’m exaggerating but you get my point.
Well, what is happening in the world is that the vast majority have decided to focus on beers and not on moving furniture. Not to mention the fact that there are bars, which are perfect places to go with friends to have a few beers after moving furniture. And when you focus too much on your beers, you don’t wait for anyone, you don’t try to do anything for anyone and you don’t ask anyone for anything. We are all drinking the beers alone. But not all of us for the same reasons: because to think about a friend’s beers, you have to have friends, to call a repairman you need money, to ask a neighbor for something you have to relate to that neighbor. And between friends, money and neighbors, where are we putting the focus? Well, on the money. I remember when I was 20 years old that I could not understand life without friends or living where my friends were not; money was necessary but it never occurred to me that I had to accumulate it for anything, I wanted it for living; and neighbors… what is that? And now, at 44 years old, I do not think the same about friends, money or neighbors. Have I evolved? I wouldn’t define it that way. Am I better than I was when I was 20? I wouldn’t say that either. So? Well, I think what happens is that the opinion one has of friends, money and neighbors depends completely on what your friends are like, how much money you need and whether the neighbors have children or dogs or not. Just kidding, just kidding. Just kidding, just kidding. The neighbors thing is something much more complex than it may seem at first. I’m even going to change of paragraph.
The neighbors. What about the neighbors? Why are there people who get along wonderfully with their neighbors no matter where they live and people who are the opposite? I am going to tell you: the issue here is not the neighbors, it is the people. But if all the neighbors are people, what nonsense is this? Yeah, yeah, yeah… Let’s say you have to separate your neighbor self from your person self. If in your ideal world as a person, you would choose not to have neighbors with in a radius of, say, 1 km. you’re never going to be a good neighbor, and if you’re not a good neighbor you’re never going to be happy living with neighbors. THIS IS A BIG PROBLEM that is not given the importance it deserves. The world would be a better place if all the people who don’t want to have neighbors could live without neighbors. And one more thing, I am going to tell you, many would realize that it is not so wonderful to live without neighbors. And this is a case of “I have no proof but no doubts either”. Am I saying that you can’t be happy without neighbors? No. I’m saying that most people wouldn’t be happy living alone even if they think they would. But not having neighbors is not being alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah… I’ll tell you one more thing, it is a little bit, but that’s an idea/opinion of mine, which I don’t pretend you share because even I am aware that it’s quite possible that it’s a wrong idea.
Evolution, evolution. Let’s see… where do I go next? The people, the neighbors, the community, the neighborhood, the city… Where do you think all this is evolving towards? I think it’s not towards anything good because the society we have created works like this (for the vast majority): you need a job to earn money to spend money for someone to accumulate money. With nuances, but that’s the way it is. And the consequence is that work is becoming more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer places; we all want/need to live close to work; there is no room for everyone; some live better and others live worse. END. This is what a few would like, but the reality is not exactly like that. Maybe for a very few people it is like that, and they manage to maintain their status throughout their lives, 80, 90 or 100 years. But of all those who live worse, some will try to live better, and they will achieve it, they are achieving it, and they will change things. Maybe neither you nor I will ever see it, but they will change. What is the problem? That this is always like that, things change very slowly and they will never stop doing it, we will see the results of some things but not of others. I think we all live with a certain hope that the world will change for the better during our lifetime, we have an idea that when we arrived the world was like this, and when we leave it will be like this, better. And this has two problems: one, we do not know when we are going to leave, we have a forecast; two, it is something that although it is happening, we may not see it, and we almost certainly do not enjoy it. But that’s just the way things are and they can’t be any other way in this case: there’s no way to fix the world in a particular way even if we all agreed on what we want.
I am going to try to go a little further, and you know that when I go further, I don’t usually go to a better place… The cycle of life is what it is: all the people, absolutely all of them, who were alive in 1850 are dead. There is no one who lasts in the world more than 150 years. But let’s imagine that we live those 150 years and divide them into three blocks. What would happen here? That we would share our first block of 50 years with other people’s second block of 50 years and other people’s third and last block of 50 years. Well, the objectives of each block are different, we all go through the same blocks, but we don’t go through those blocks under the same circumstances. Consequences? Our objectives in the first block are not the same as the objectives of those who were in the first block 50 years earlier, nor will they be 50 years later. And this with all the blocks. What do we have here, then? A CONFLICT. In the monologue on society, I told you that the resolution of a conflict depends more on the question you ask than on the answer you give. Well, the question here should be to look for the best and the fairest for the 150 years as a whole, accepting what we wanted in the first block when we are in the third block and others are the ones who enjoy it. And this we will never achieve because we are not good at handling long periods of time.
Evolution, evolution… Evolution does not exist! At least in our case. What we do is to transform some things when we are in one of the blocks to transform them again when we are in the next one and the same when we are in the last and final block of 50 years. But in addition, there is something that complicates everything a little more, and that is the fact that the time of life is not the only influential factor, but also your circumstances in that time of life, which are not the same for everyone and never will be because it is impossible. Does anyone see the sense of a world in which we are all lawyers… or designers… or doctors… or any other profession? It doesn’t make sense. Well, I’m going to go a little further again. If there is a profession that does make sense for all of us to practice: farmer and/or rancher. And at some point it almost did, basically because if you didn’t, you died. If you don’t eat, you die. And in order to eat, you need something to eat. The problem is that always, since the beginning of time, there have been those who have not given a damn. And it has been precisely those who have made the decisions that affect the lives of everyone else. Because in order to be able to do nothing, someone has to do more than their share. And this is what cannot be and what we are allowing in this non-existent evolution of ours.
Let’s do another imagination exercise. Let’s imagine that we all decide something like this: let’s see, we are 8 billion on the way to 9 billion. We have so much surface of water, so much jungle, forest and meadows… How much surface is necessary to build 10 billion equal houses with their small plot of land? Well, that much. How long would it take? That much. So let’s get down to it. Everybody agree? I think we all know the answer to this question. But do we know if in a simple majority vote, would the yes or no vote win? What do you think? Think carefully, if you will, reflect, damned ones. I am not going to say what I believe. But I will say something else, I was saying before that evolution does not exist, but it is not exactly like that. There is no such thing as the evolution we all have a little bit in our heads: one that starts here and so, and “ends” there and so, and in which things ADVANCE: more knowledge and more health, which are the key factors of the human being as a species. Our evolution is one of nature’s greatest improvisation exercises. And the funniest thing, which may not be funny but I find it funny, is that we improvise on facts that we ourselves create thinking that we will always find a solution, another solution. But there is not always going to be a solution. And this is funny because it’s true. The sun will bring loneliness. And that is also evolution.
Evolution does not take us into account and we do not take evolution into account because we are not able to assimilate it for the space of time that we are alive and for the time that space has and will have. Do you know the movie My Life Without Me? Imagine if we all lived a kind of “My world without me” and acted and behaved in such a way that when we are gone everything is fine, as fine as the world can be without us, and being fully aware that we are valuable thanks to the people who share the world precisely now with us, whether they are in the first block or in the last one, in this circumstance or in that one… Imagine, imagine, damned ones… and put on sunscreen.
