Je me révolte, donc nous sommes

Who am I? What is the kernel of myself? The answer that has enjoyed the most widespread acceptance is Rene Descartes' founding myth of modernity: "Cogito, ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am). He came to this conclusion after considering that everything out there must be brought under heavy questioning and cast under layer after layers of doubts. Once such heavy exercise into hard core doubting was exhausted, only one truth should remain unabated: that Doubting Thomas thinks. Thinking, that is, certain extremely complicated operation that takes place in my brain, stands as the ultimate and irrefutable evidence of the reality of poor little old me as a being. Ladies and gentlemen, plese meet Homo Sapiens.

But, hold on. Mr. & Mrs. Sapiens's brainly prowess is affected, for better or worse, by not so lofty intellectual tsunamis. The Sapiens and their kids experience suffering, battle with the pangs of unrequited love, long for impossible goals, want to reach to the stars and at the end see that their brains sometimes are invaded by the forces of Col. Alzheimer as they reach certain age (plus other additional situations).



















There must be something beyond the mere act of thinking, sexy as it surely is. Therefore, Miguel de Unamuno suggested that Descartes's dictum should be rebranded and sold under the motto: "I struggle, therefore I am" (Well, he didn't exactly use those words. His were Lucho, luego existo).


Arresting battle cry. No doubt about it. Unamuno could rally all the forces needed to topple all the dictators that still remain standing in the Arab world and beyond. However, there is a problem. Like Descartes, Unamuno remained stucked in the individual, an isolated person without a past and without a context. The truth is that such a fellow doesn't exist.

We just mentioned the dictators, didn't we? All across the Arab world, satrapies and dictatorships are seeing the end of the world as they knew it, and so are we. Rebellion and revolution, this time atop the cyber-waves (is that technologically correct?) of Facebook and Twitter are taking me back to Albert Camus. He observed that as soon as the oppressed says "enough!" to his or her misery, there takes place a dual birth: the oppressed becomes a rebel that recovers his or her individual self and his or her ensuing mobilization begets a new collective humanity. Defying syntactic correcteness, Camus went back to the old who-am-I problem to say: "I rebel, therefore we are."

What the current Arab generation is doing can be described as the dawn of a new day in the history of humankind. Right when the thriumphant capitalist mentality was installing, once and for all, selfish greed and individualism up on top of the highest pedestal, there came the Arabs of today to create a renewed sense of solidarity around a single and collective cause: freedom.

They rebel, therefore we are. Hopefully we'll become more human.

World football: kids on the loose (II)

Tomorrow is the big day. South Africa 2010. Heaven coming down to earth, as it does every four years. If I were blogging directly from J-bourg, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, down the Cape around the Tip or any of the townships, today would already be this big D-Day in anticipation to V-Day on July 11.

It's the perfect moment to remember the second golden kid. Diego Maradona: gifted, self-assured, strong, feisty, rebellious, loyal to team mates and to his team, opinionated, a blessing and a curse. A leader. He came to this world to flood it with the beauty of football to the highest pitch of plasticity. Some top ranked coach in Italy used to say: "Thanks God, it's Sunday. It's Maradona Day."

And yet, Maradona was a tragic hero. All the foundational narratives, myths and legends that speak of the mysteries of human life and the divine took up residence in this unique man that keeps on challenging his destiny today that he aims at claiming a top spot as a respectable coach. The divine and the plain human, Cain and Abel, angel and demon, light and darkness, ying and yang, but above all pure passion, love for beauty, all those constructive and destructive forces drive this genius who was once a kid. His temperament didn't help him to surf easily into adulthood. Just check this out:



I am one of those who grew up giving thanks for the blessing of seeing his prodigious left foot unleash terror and awe in foe and friends alike around the globe.

Dieguito was just coming out of his teen years when he touched the sky as a world champion, but by then he had already built a strong reputation as a world class footballer. In the World Coup of Mexico 1986, he created the masterpiece that you can see below. To many the best goal ever was the one that Maradona scored against England after leaving Her Highness's subjects and realm all scattered behind him as he proved to be the unstoppable little giant that snatched the world trophy for his country for the second time. Thanks, Diego, for so much beauty!