Joaquín Torres García vs. Ayn Rand: A Unique Profile of the Uruguayan National Character

Introductory Note

Another year has passed, during which I, unfortunately, have been too busy making the money I need to survive to engage in what I really love to do. Don’t get me wrong—I enjoy my current writing and editing work, and I am very thankful to have the opportunity to do it. But it takes up all my energy. Perhaps the new year will bring me to a place where I can once again do the writing that truly moves my spirit and feeds my soul.

Imagine: Religion as Social Reform - Reza Aslan, Iran, and Religious Faith

Reza Aslan

(photo by Larry D. Moore CC BY-SA 3.0)

La Paloma, Uruguay

So, the holiday season is upon us. It always sneaks up on me, here in the Southern Hemisphere, where springtime is awakening into summertime. It doesn’t help that I live in a summer resort town, where the bigger issue is the launch of the holiday season that will rain a deluge of beachgoers onto the usually solitary sands of the lovely, if rather windy, shores of La Paloma. Plus, the Catholicism that infuses Latin American culture is not nearly as ubiquitous in Uruguay, and this country’s clearly defined separation of church and state also tempers the Christmas holiday atmosphere. Besides, not since childhood has Christmas been a holiday that I can get into, anyway, given my distain for the crass commercialization and hyper-consumerism that surrounds it in the States. Well, that, plus I am an atheist who feels a bit hypocritical celebrating something I don’t believe in, although I can dig the idea of celebrating family togetherness and the joy that so many other people get out of the whole thing for their own sakes. Oh, but there’s so much more emotional baggage involved in my attitude toward Christmastime, including memories of that one really difficult Christmas that preceded my mother’s death from breast cancer by about a month, all those years ago...

Outside the Surreality Bubble

People all around the world watch the circus of U.S. elections unfold with the understanding that the presidency of the United States affects their lives. Decisions about war and peace, whether or not to address climate change, crafting trade policies and ensuring the stability of financial institutions on the part of the “leader of the free world” reach far beyond the borders of the United States of America. But it is not a one-way relationship: conditions and events in the rest of the world also affect the lives of U.S. citizens. This is not just a result of recent “globalization.” It has long been a reality that has simply been overlooked by a contentedly self-absorbed society.

The Nuclear Iranian Fear Factor

Astronomical Clock, Prague (image via Wikipedia)

Time, I am convinced, is not a linear dimension. Rather, I believe it is a mysterious force of cyclical motion, propelling events along the nearly imperceptible curve of reality. It is at those moments that stand out for their enduring personal impact that time’s cyclical nature reveals itself. And for me, such a time is when fears of war between the West and Iran are flamed.

So what does abortion have to do with government fiscal responsibility?

Margaret Sanger, Founder , in 1916, of Planned Parenthood
(image via Wikipedia)

Other than possibly reducing the number of dependents upon the state who have been born into circumstances where they hardly have a chance at making decent lives for themselves, the two have little to do with each other. Yet this is a priority for people who claim to be crusading for liberty and ... no, not justice for all, but rather, freedom from the oppression of justice for all (and taxes).

Spiritual Vibrations

5 March, Ash cloud rising from Pu`u `Ō `ō as crater floor collapses
due to magma withdrawal, Kilauea Volcano. 


I was speaking figuratively in referring to Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess who lives in Kilauea Volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, when I wrote:

This force that is welling up from the interior of the planet is another incarnation of Mother River, the Mother of Life, the Nurturer, but also the Destroyer. She is what the Hawaiians call Pele, the Volcano Goddess.

How was I to know that she was so soon to express herself?

The Female Force Erputs

The earthquakes in New Zealand and the tremors that have been shaking the earth all around the Ring of Fire are connected with the events in Northern Africa and the Middle East. The roiling energy that is escaping where it can from underneath the Earth’s crust is being reflected in the uprisings of people who live in the very regions where the chain of humanity reaches far back into history’s depths.

Hope Began Anew

Euardo Galeano
photo by Wikipedia author, Daniel Zanini H

Ojalá podamos ser desobedientes, cada vez que recibimos órdenes que humillan nuestra conciencia o violan nuestro sentido común. †

If only we could be disobedient, each time we receive orders that humiliate our conscience or violate our common sense.

Imagine that – Eduardo Galeano’s wish has come to pass.

There are those who look upon the momentous events in North Africa and the Middle East, at the underlying food crisis at the base of these events, at an uncertain future with fear in their hearts, and then there are those who, like, me, are full of hope.

I am in no way optimistic but I remain a prisoner of hope. ‡

Mother River Power



Mother River
Statue of Mother Huang He, Lanzhou, China - photo by Fanghong

They are the wombs of civilization – Mesopotamia, the Nile, the Indus, the Yellow, and the Coatzalcualcos River Valleys. Agriculture, mathematics, written languages, astronomy, architecture, religious and social hierarchy, and urban culture were the children that they bore. These children were the eldest sons of the agriculture-based societies that fathered virtually all that defines modern humanity. The distant pasts of these civilizations define the struggles of today – pasts that share a kinship, even if they knew nothing of each other for millennia before contacts were made between them. They are brothers born of Mother River.

Poets and Connectivity

Victor Jara
Theater director and folk singer
murdered during 1973 coup in Chile
For his communist beliefs

Artists get it. Musicians get it. Poets and writers get it. Societies that value art, music, poetry and literature get it. Progressives of all shapes and colors get it. We are all connected.

It seems like it is such a no-brainer. Yet, there are so many who do not get it, who do not believe in empathy as life’s primary principle, as more important that personal happiness, salvation, or bliss. They see the world as a battleground, where everyone must fight for limited resources. Everyone is a potential enemy. What’s mine is mine, or my family is inherently entitled, or my spiritual self is separate from the suffering of others.

This is what Connectivity is. Intuiting that my iPod and my clothes and my child’s toys and my out-of-season fruits are themselves the fruits of the labor of people in far away places who are struggling just to feed their families, whose humble dreams are that their children will not have to struggle this hard.

Connectivity is the Continuum of Time and Space and Meaning. It is the joining of All That Is into One – all thoughts, all memories, all experiences, all emotions, all motions, all energies, all occurrences, all forces, all knowledge, all expressions, all processes, all things. Connectivity is Engagement with all of the world, the entire universe, the universe of multiple universes, and beyond.

Connectivity “widens the boundaries of our being,” as Pablo Neruda said of empathy. He said that empathy “unites all living things.” I am saying that Connectivity is what many think of as God, and that Empathy is the Meaning of Life. I am saying that the reproductive drive of all living things is not a selfish act, but an empathetic passion, a desire to create, the need to share, to love – to connect.

Connectivity has no beginning or end, and no divisive dichotomy. Darkness and light are not in opposition, rather, they are a dance of light energy, absorbencies and reflections and refractions, as miraculous as a sun shower’s rainbow or a fireworks display. Night and day are not symbolic of evil and good, but daily stages of a larger process of a spinning earth’s motion in relation to its sun. Male and female are how we humans try to understand ourselves, but even this dichotomy is by no means universal.

Connectivity as applied to politics means that there is no defined “right” and “left.” There is conservative ideology and progressive ideology, but they are not polar opposites, as conservatives would like everyone to believe. And this is was the whole point of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Keep Fear Alive, the whole point of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the Colbert Report, and the whole point of Barack Obama’s presidency. The whole point is that Empathy has no Boundaries. The problem is that progressive ideology is essentially the breaking down of boundaries, of barriers, of division, and to conservatives who live behind their walls of separation, be it religious, economic, or cultural seclusion, this is a frightening thing.

What conservatives want to conserve are such institutions as the division that entitlement imposes, the secrecy that power uses as a crutch, the righteousness that religion often assumes, the selfishness that Randian capitalism upholds. What progressives want is to change the system to allow access to power, to engage in real dialogue and real diplomacy, to ensure real freedom of religion and expression, to have government work for everyone in society, and of course, to give peace a chance. One set of principles are based on exclusion, while the other is based on connectivity.

As so often happens in life, it all boils down to Pink Floyd. “Us and Them.” “The Wall.” “Breathe.” Roger Waters’ “Amused to Death.” And so many others. These songs are beloved throughout the world, in all languages, and not just because they have a good beat and you can dance to them. It is because they are connective. They express ideas that are so much larger than what their titles proclaim. There is no “Us and Them.” “The Wall” is just a mental construct, built for protection, but its protection only brings dehumanizing isolation and insanity. To breathe is to care. And the idea of the human race amusing itself to death is so astute, in these times when overstimulation drives extreme living that also seeks to break down boundaries, yet, it is a kind of mental blockage that keeps people from connecting and being truly engaged.

Connectivity is complicated. It is expansive. It is inclusive. It is expansive and inclusive music and art and poetry and literature. And societies that move more slowly, whose internet connections don’t always work, whose daily lives function at a slower pace, whose art and music and poetry and literature are treasured, and appreciated, and they lay as a foundation for the appreciation of other art and music and poetry and literature that is expansive and inclusive, like Pink Floyd, and the Beatles – these societies pay close attention to art and music and poetry and literature. They take to heart the love for those who they don’t even know that Pablo Neruda was expressing in his writings. They are engaged, not in simple dichotomies, not in simple thinking, not always peacefully, but they do not let pain and fear and a past where artists and musicians and poets and writers were persecuted for their expansive and inclusive politics stop them from caring.

They are connected.

see related links:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chilean-army-officers-killed-folk-singer-2167292.html

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/2832-the-legacy-of-the-nueva-cancion-an-interview-with-patricio-manns-

The Real Mythbusters



Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart debate reasonableness. Photograph: Kris Connor/Getty Images

So the mystery has been solved: What are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert going to do at their big rally?

Unlike Glen Beck’s rally, where the tax-exempt co-sponsor of the event, the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, required all speakers to sign an agreement promising not to talk politics, yet the politically polarizing Sarah Palin was one of the main speakers, the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Keep Fear Alive was not in the least bit political. That’s right – no left-wing bias on stage, unless one considers diversity, the patriotic call to come together as a nation and stop allowing ourselves to be painted as opposing forces, and comedy itself to be left-wing biases.

Fragmented Reality

My most recent post at Because the World is Round... is the tale of how I could note make sense out of a Tehuelche legend that I was trying to translate from Castellano to English. It turned out that the version I had of the legend was just fragments of the complete story that had been posted on a tourism website, feigning interest in the indigenous culture that had been nearly wiped out in order to build the resort there. I was in some ways relieved, and in others, incensed. Relief came from knowing that my understanding of Castellano was not insufficient, that the problem was not due to a horrible translation from the original Tehuelche language into Castellano, although how accurate it is remains unknown to me; and that the Tehuelches were not simply horrible storytellers. My outrage sprang from the irony of the tourism industry utilizing what I would call a crude caricature of the Tehuelche culture to market their product amidst land disputes and the larger struggle of the indigenous Mapuche and Tehuelche people for not only justice but also to regain their dignity.