Third lap the podcast with Alejandro Gaviría and Ricardo Silva Romero, a podcast of
the arroba locutorio. The speaker should assume that you have all the violence inside
and all the evil you see outside, you can have it inside and not
feel above others. That seems to me to be fundamental and makes me think
that perhaps the hell of these times is the absence of compassion. That is,
when one sees that there is no compassion for one or that one does
not feel compassion for others, there is hell. It is to lack the
capacity to assume the human. This seems interesting because it takes us like some
kind of mirror. It' s hell. Metaphorically, it is nothing other
than recognizing our ability to do evil. But then winter becomes the other thing,
to tell me to understand human nature in its complexity and to attribute that
role of implacable judge. Hi, Ricardo Hi, Alejandro. I want us
to talk a little bit before we start with the subject of cooking day,
third round of how the issues are made. And we have some kind of
implicit agreement, and it' s that we get ready first. Yeah,
we didn' t make it or we went on a date. There'
s our friend Alexpinilla, and we' re starting to do some sort of
brainstorming and we can have a theme because we don' t want to Google,
we don' t want to get ready, and we don' t
want this to turn into a uribe of commacherros without talking bad. We think
it' s a conversation. It' s a spontaneous conversation. If we
don' t come here and say something we' ve thought about before and
the conversation is taking on a cafeteria structure. Let' s say more than
anything else, so it' s the conversation that almost defines it by lack
of structure and free actions. What one is remembering is that current of consciousness
that is taking us from one side to the other. Exactly. We'
re always surprised by the themes, except when we' ve had guests.
We have no more to prove, that is, of ideas that we are
going to hypothesis, that we are going to prove in any way rather we
are at the mercy of the memory and the humor of the day. We
' ve already had more than seventy chapters. We' ve talked about all
the issues. There are probably ideas that come back yes, but that shows
that conversation, dialogue, is infinite. Many of us can speak here We
can stay eternally with Ricardo too, who always accompanies us by talking about conversations.
We haven' t turned back. I think there are rumors of other
podcasts where people resort to ppactive substances, to a sip. No. No,
this has been sober. He' s been sober, but we look
drunk. It' s really amazing. And also, I want to clarify
since I say I talk about drunkards, that when I spoke Ricardo, he
is not talking about myself in third person of Ricardo Daza, who is ours,
our engineer and always is our other companion of these talks. I think
Ricardo, who up to here has the accurate and accurate accounting of how many
episodes there are seven, seven is not the number of unimportant fortunes. Yeah,
no, yeah, yeah, yeah, no. We are truly proud
that having a good time seventy- seven times is a great achievement in life.
And today, in that previous conversation to get to the point, we
said we wanted to talk about hell. If we come to that conclusion,
I remember a little phrase that I told Jorge Luis Borges that said half in
humorous tone, at the end of his life, saying of the final judgment,
how it was of all this, follow a judgment already tired of life
and he said, and he then said what it seemed to him that heaven
and hell were disproportionate, hell as that eternal punishment for the bad ones,
or heaven the eternal prize, which were disproportionate, that men said. We
don' t deserve that much. Of course, there is a proportion in
this metaphysics, in those promises of the desert. Yes I the one who
came to religion, who invented these metaphors a little rough, very strong,
and I taught in a school thirty years ago and was almost the age of
the students and you tell them and I are always problems. And it seemed
to me that it might be interesting because they were classes of 14- year
- olds who didn' t want classes of anything, that it was interesting
to structure it with hell, that it was going to be attractive. And
then I started reading things from hell among everyone, a story of hell by
a guy named George Minois French. And what seemed most interesting to me was
the moment that I found interesting that book, it was the moment when hell
becomes such a violent, violent and eternal punishment, because there is a stage
of hell, which is the stage before the Catholic Empire. If one wants
to see it, on that side, yes, the Catholic hegemony, the
Catholic culture, which is the moment of antiquity, in which hell is the
place to which the dead are going to give, which is almost a dusty
place. Sometimes they imagine it as the Earth, as the center of the
earth, as a place full of worms, of things, for breaking down,
but it does not have that burden of punishment, of sin and punishment
of the body, of the body, even the body beyond life. That
seemed particularly interesting to me. It' s a long book for the subject.
There are seven hundred pages and one of going culture by culture, seeing
what their hell is like, because it starts to be hard to read.
But that' s very interesting, that turn towards punishment and then the contemporary
turn of the 20th century, almost that' s when hell starts to be
personal, when it' s no longer the same hell for everyone, but
everyone lives their own hell that also has to do with lacking things. Above
all, it is hell like human consciousness. One locked in that hell of
his own. I find it interesting Richard what you say about hell like that
place where the dead go. I haven' t had much contact with the
word" hell" in general, now that you' ve spoken. Of
that, a hell that I have read about is something related and it is
the hell that is becoming life that does not end eternal life. There'
s a little bit of Gulliver' s travels, which I like to quote
is over there. Luke Nack Island. There are some guys who are born
with a sphere, a red circle in the middle of the forehead, who
live blue and gray and live eternally and you see it like it, that
is, hell, that your portraits, is a decomposition, a loss of
all appetites and in a kind of metamorphossa, it is inverse, a return
to making some chrysalids and you see that they are entering some hell. But
it is that, it is that continuity of life, beyond what one considers
reasonable, expectable. There are many literary hells in such a way that one
thinks, as we have spoken, of dystopian novels or dystopian fictions, which
are a very useful metaphor for talking about life on earth. Hells as well
macondo, to say one very close. That is clearly a hell or comala,
the hell of Rulfo, of Pedro Páramo and they all come from the
hell of Dante, of the Divine Comedy, which is such a literary hell
that, as a travel guide, has Virgilio leading forward by the nine circles
that, among others, perhaps the funniest thing about that hell is or the
most shocking thing that hell is that the worst of those nine circles, that
is where people are really burning that they are suffering the most is roasting,
let' s say, it is the circle that deserve those who have betrayed
friendship. To me, that always seems impressive to me that it is worse
in Dante' s nine circles, the betrayal of friendship is worse than,
for example, violence, physical violence, also borges that the history of literature
is simply the story of a few recurring metaphors, recurring to the clear common
place, and that idea ahead and those hells and concentric circles and that classification
that makes hand in hand almost the paradigm of man of letters. Yes,
it is a metaphor. But I also find interesting that idea of traditiating friendship,
because, in essence, it is a deviation from the human heart that
has no forgiveness, because the first morality is born of reciprocity, yes,
it makes of building with those we call friends, a kind of implicit contract
that is not written anywhere. It' s the one where we respect each
other and I help you and you help me tomorrow and so on. Yeah,
it' s like ripping off a fortune. Not luck is the seed
of our ethics. Yeah, totally the ethics center. The center is there
and that' s where almost everyone comes out in one a. I liked
reading biographies of Baruke Espinosa. It seems to me an interesting character who is
well expelled from his community as well because perhaps he did not believe in hell
and said that only a commandment matters to love his neighbor. Of course it
' s a bit the same concept. In Dante' s art hell is
the first circle called limbo. The second circle is that of lust, the
third gluttony, the fourth of greed, and the fifth of anger. The
sixth of heresy. The seventh of the violence, the eighth of the fraud
and the ninth of it is betrayal and the worst of the betrayals is the
tradition of friendship. Lust what lust is at first. That burns one,
but it' s like a microwave, but it' s not that strong.
And thinking of Jorges, the aleve has a lot of going down into
hell. In fact, the character that leads to the narrator that one supposes
is a sort of borges to see the point where all the two are.
To see the alef is a guy named Carlos Argentine Daneri, who is commander
Allilleri. There' s allusion to Avila. That journey also his descent into
hell, the alef, which is the grace in literature of the theme of
hell, the descent to hells that you are so pinocho when it descends into
the ocean and brings the dad from the Disney version, from the whale and
in the version of the book from the shark. Of course it' s
more of the book It' s a scary thing. The Disney movie is
also terrifying, but it' s getting a little better and it' s
the exercise like in the eneida or going down to hell and bringing in the
neida. It is the golden branch, but the descent of hell is supposed
to be really the way of redemption and understanding of the human. It comes
back with news about the lives of men that is similar to what Campbell describes
as the hero' s journey. Not exactly, it' s going to
a place, transforming to reach your community, transforming it. This idea of
the journey to hell makes me connect it with another recurring story or metaphor that
I have always liked that there is literature is full of this and it is
the needle and fall, and it is good, hell is also on this
earth. Yes, and that story, which is the personal story of many
people and especially the people who have lived the most public lives climb up and
juven and juven But all that just doesn' t make the descent, the
inevitable descent to what becomes a personal hell. She' s a doctor.
I' ve always liked it, I' ve always liked ohe and fall
seemed to me. Yes, that there is something interesting about that tragic,
also that has been a recurring theme in our podcast Ricardo. Yeah, yeah.
And how to deal with the boom and the fall, how to be
wise in those two moments that is not easy in either one of us.
There, thinking of the 20th century, because that phrase of artre' s
play that, if I' m not bad, premiered when the Second War
is ending, that is, it comes loaded with all that experience. The
famous phrase of hell are the others that at first might sound like the fault
of the others, but really, when you review the play, what the
character who is the protagonist is saying is that hell is the others. When
one is unable to relate to others, that is, the fault is not
of others, but of one. The others are a constant proof that one
is incapable of living. It' s a little in that sense and it
' s about boom and fall. Somehow, that play is about how you
deal with the lockdown, for example, when these are characters who are locked
up and I do think it' s the hell you live in these times.
The falls we all have seem to me in that of the others.
Richard is another form of hell, hell on this earth that are the most
common. The others are simply human imagination. It' s ostracism. It
is not when one is banished and a community is and is pointed out by
others and is ethically pointed out what that implies. That' s that banishment,
it' s a form of hell. The others are the hells we
have built in search of paradise or heaven, ideologies that have tried to build
a paradise on earth, but that have ended on the contrary, turning into
the slaughter and hell. The man said I think Aldus Hockley is a strange
animal. It kills more by ideological satiety than by hunger. I didn'
t stay Yes, I kept thinking about the others and the schism, the
i- lostracism. I kept thinking about that because then it makes me think
that this whole culture, for example, of cancellation, is that and has
one thing like that there was no moral punishment since Catholic hell. I'
ve never taught by some judges who followed themselves a place on their side.
Also, as it is disproportionate, I thought, as we have ever spoken
in the human Taint, Philip Rott' s novel, which is the first
time that I read something about a cancellation and that it is a novel novel,
because in the nineties political correction found its name. They put it there,
put it there, the first Bush was the first to talk about political
correctness. We' ve talked about this before. But I did keep thinking
about ostracism, banishment and how easy it is. Today the other one.
The other day I wrote a column on the issue of Gaza, in favour
of the Palestinian State and against the genocide in Gaza, very clearly that there
is genocide there, because I believe that is already proven. There were immediately
a couple of people saying that was a column justifying the genocide in Gaza.
And I found it impressive how all these people who have attributed themselves to the
role of judge, who has appointed themselves, because there is no organism,
because they always read them diagonally. They read diagonally because they are already determined
to see who they are going to condemn and whom they are not willing to
send every day to the exact hell. That' s that relentless look from
the others and basically that you ethically judged that it doesn' t belong.
If you can' t belong to that community, social media has been overstated.
It' s a theme that' s been recurring on our podcast.
It seems rich to me that, in any case, those two concepts of
heaven and hell, in the background, are metaphors of our ambivalent nature,
which has always been said angels and demons of that dual theme of the human
being, that we are able to surrender ourselves to us, but also to
betray our friends in which case we would deserve that ninth circle of hell.
Yes, that complexity of the human being is the material from which we are
ethically so difficult. I think it was Gettel who said there' s no
crime I don' t think I can commit. Of course, we'
re on the edge of the us and that' s a look that seems
compassionate to me. That is, it is compassionate to assume that you have
all the violence inside and all the evil you see outside, you can have
it inside and not feel above others. That seems to me to be fundamental
and makes me think that perhaps the hell of these times is the absence of
compassion, that is, when one sees that there is no compassion for one
or that one does not feel compassion for others, there is hell that is
lacking the ability to assume the human. I find this interesting because it takes
us like some kind of mirror. It' s hell. Metaphorically, it
is nothing other than recognizing our ability and doing evil. But then winter becomes
the other thing, to tell me, to understand human nature in its complexity
and to attribute that role. It' s relentless, of course, every
day, not in an obsessive way. No mirror. No mirror. The
fantasy that hell is the others means literally that or the fantasy that bad guys
are the others. I' m impressed with those. Maybe we' ve
already talked about it, but we don' t care anymore. That I
am very impressed by the stories, novels and films that are also in the
war and that choose as protagonist a child that there is one can think of
a novel by a painter named Fredulman, which is called Reencounter, or a
film by Luis mal that is called God to children, which was very famous
at the end of the eighties and near that moment. Another is called hope
and glory and even the empire of the sun. Those stories of war,
the tongue of butterflies told from a child who lives in a village, even
bucolic, like in a paradise, in a Eden, and suddenly there come
some bad ones and they ruin it and start bombing and they start closing houses,
they start ruining what was so beautiful and so pure and they always seemed
to me just that trap, the trap of us were good and there came
some villains here and they damaged everything. And that I think it' s
to save the social responsibility of having begotten those villains, of having fed them,
fattened them with the years and that one day they were the ones who
took charge of everything. It seems nice to me that Ricardo had not thought
of it, because this innocent look, that innocent look that abstracts that social
context totally that shows this duality of the human soul in a more bloody,
complicated, complicated way. We are who we are, yes and not taking
responsibility. It also seems to me like a way to preserve hell, to
think that everything comes from nothing, that evil is generated spontaneously, that they
land the earth from time to time. It seems to me that it is
a way of serving hell, not of not resolving matters, of facing the
mirror. I think so, the fantasy that you' re part of the
good guys is a big risk. Yeah, hell. Maybe that' s
the idea that there' s going to be a relentless judge, who'
s going to choose between them. Here' s the good guys. Here
are the bad ones, and the bad ones deserve an eternal captigo. If
we' ve been reading Mafalda in the house with corinés so she' ll
fall asleep, I don' t know why she sounded. That' s
obviously no idea of one. And yesterday we got one of those cartoons,
one of those Band- Aids that I remembered, which is that Mafalda is
with Manolito, the savage capitalist, who has brush hair, and he is
with Felipe, who is like the idealist Bonachón, who tempts out, has
gone out and dreams of the lone lanner and is a typical one he likes
very well, even Manolito is also authentic. Yeah, that' s all
gross and that' s always a beauty. And what' s better is
that Mafalda tells them that society has to get ahead and then Manolito and Felipe
almost grab to death because everyone says that forward is to the other side.
It' s on the opposite side. So, Manuelita goes ahead is that
way and Felipe says no forwards, that way and they start almost killing because
the two have a different concept of what it is to get ahead and I
lack it. Then you understand why nothing works, because everyone, as on
Twitter, as on the networks the hashtag, we good people are more who
use it, the right most scary and the craziest on the other side of
the spectrum. It is one proof, that what is lacking is self-
criticism, always the ability to make therapy, to analyze oneself and there will
always be those opposing visions and we will never fully agree, because human affairs
are assigned by that duality. I would like to end with a related but
different subject. It has to do with the first part of the conversation,
and it is to emphasize that neither heaven nor hell are eternal and we do
not want them to be eternal, neither the one as punishment nor the other
as permanent pleasure. There is a small story hidden in a novel by Julian
Barns, this British writer, which is used with great connections to French culture.
Also one person goes to heaven and arrives and six months take the sky
and the sky is like the best conversations, the best manquets, the best
parties. Six months, he' s happy there and some afternoon he finds
a crowd of people in the sky around an aparatic where there' s a
button to press and there' s the administrator of the sky. Always,
always there has to be a Urse administrator this one approaches, approaches this crowd,
these people who are there and asks good and what happens. They'
re looking and they don' t push it that little button, because this
is forever over and they ask and someone has ever pushed it and the administrator
of heaven tells them they all ended up doing it to be part of the
good ones is. Nothing is eternal, neither heaven nor hell. There'
s a movie that I really like that' s called The Fending Your Life,
which they put in Spanish biza el paraíso, which is like a chipitche
song, because it' s from a guy or a comedian named Albert Brooks
who' s great and he' s a guy who dies and he'
s going to hit the sky and what happens in heaven is a trial movie
with a prosecutor and lawyer and what really makes one stay in heaven is that
he shows that he' s no longer afraid. And then it seems to
me that if the opposite, heaven is fear in that movie or hell.
Hell is probably that, but nothing is eternal in the world Richard is not,
and that eternal punishment for evils that is hell is a disproportionate human invention,
but also a human pretense in these times of madness, such as a
gross embrace. It' s clear we can all write. It is clear
that we can all, with luck and vocation, devote ourselves to the craft
of writing, but lately I think that we can not only write, but
that we must write. Writing is the best therapy we have at hand.
Welcome to a fictional audio course on how and why to write. Take the
audiocourse of fictional writing in the locutorio com slash fictionario with Ricardo Silva Romero.
Always pick a good time. Always choose a good conversation. Third lap podcast.
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