Million faces

This poem is not final, but is the product of a sudden inspiration while thinking on a train. It requires final touches, but it has now the virtue of spontaneity.

Eighteen millions,
the train here comes,
million faces,
the train then goes.
One face there shone,
but the train was gone,
between million faces,
to never return.

Eighteen millions,
how many more?
Shine there I saw,
standing alone,
saw her just once,
but the train was gone,
between million faces,
forever begone.

Eighteen millions,
I was one more,
She goes to Brooklyn,
I to the Bronx.
Saw her at Union,
but the train was gone,
between million faces,
I was just one more.

Eighteen millions,
hours on board,
some on the N,
some on the Four.
I glared her,
but her train was gone.
She goes to Brooklyn,
and I to the Bronx.

Short dialogue on liberal contractualism

The question: How can a political society emerge from a convention like a contract between individuals, if all conventions emerge from a political society in the first place?

Myself: The answer is that there is no such contract, and that human individuals are gregarious by nature, from which, then, conventions as contracts start to exist. Which also lead us to the conclusion that individuals are inasmuch there is a society to live in; hence they must adapt to the conventions and traditions from that society in the first place in order to rationally change them if they want to, always bearing in mind that society stands above the individuals. Contrary to this basic statement of common sense, liberal contractual thinking, in its individualistic fanaticism, is destroying the only base from where any rational human individual can live with dignity: society; by destroying its symbols of community. Examples: family, country and religion through feminism, pacifism and atheism.

Wise opponent: Feminism destroys families? Are you suggesting that misogyny fosters societal feelings?

Myself: That is not what I'm implying with my example. Family as a social value of good is between radical feminism and irrational misogyny. Feminism today is an attempt to destroy any kind of manly behavior and value (like honor, for example), also as a complete denationalization of femininity. By alienating persons from their gender background, destroying any truthful and sincere possibility of love between a man and a woman, the emotional base for a healthy marriage. In America feminism is against marriage, which is the same as to say, being against family. I'm not talking about feminism theory, but about main street feminism.
In any case, the examples above are only useful in my comment in order to show the consequences of thinking about society in a contractual way between individuals, instead of the real natural inclination toward living in community that all humans share from birth, with community values before and above individual values.
Again thinking in individual as opposed to community is a misleading assumption. Community values always have a certain level of individual values, depending on the case. But the important thing to point out is the prevalence of communion over ego. The other way around risks destruction. No Leviathan can pull it together without real and spontaneous communion.

On Justice as Patriotism

"To have family or a city that is one's own implies the distinction between insiders and outsiders; and the outsiders are the potential enemies. Justice as helping friends and harming enemies is a peculiarly political definition of justice, and its dignity stands or falls with the dignity of political life. Every nation has wars and must defend itself; it can only do so if it has citizens who care for it and are willing to kill the citizens of the other nations. If the distinction between friends and enemies, and the inclination to help the former and harm the latter, were obliterated from the heart and mind of man, political life would be impossible" (Bloom, "Interpretive Essay" in The Republic of Plato, p. 318).

Reading Plato will never be out of date. What makes him a classic is the fact that in his work, particularly in his Republic, he tackles most of the issues regarding the problematical nature of politics. The first book of this work opens with a dialogue between Socrates and three other interlocutors discussing the notion of Justice, which will be the object that the entire work will aim at. For Justice seems, at least in Ancient times, the political good par excellence. The three other main characters of this first book are Cephalus, his son Polemarchus and the irate Thrasymachus.

The quoted text refers to Polemarchus argument on what justice means. He arrives at the conclusion (no without being insistently questioned by Socrates) that Justice as the virtue of making good to your friends, and doing wrong to your enemies. Now, independently of Socrates final arguments, I would like to wonder around this notion, because it seems to be the central argument of patriotism. Starting, this concept may strike us as irrational and cruel, because our Western christianized culture of universal peace and fraternity completely contradict such statement. But let us not be misguided by our liberal illusions of how the would ought to be from our moral view, and lets pay attention to what it says about the nature of politics.

It came to my mind that the contemporary political thinker that defend such an argument in similar language is the German jurist Carl Schmitt. He argues that the relation that determines political phenomena is the friend and enemy relationship. That to presume sovereignty from a political community, it must be capable to delimit who are their friends, either by referring by friends the citizens that form the political body or the external allies, and separates them from a common enemy, which for sure refers to other threatening political communities or internal sentiment of treachery. When a polity is unable to define by itself from any other compelling polity, perhaps would that means that the former enjoys no freedom at all and cannot be really called sovereign state. This ideas, summed with the accidental condition that Schmitt belonged to the Nazi Party in Germany, is viewed today with much precaution or skepticism. Apart from all of that, I do think there is something to be concluded from Schmitt's account of the political, as from Polemarchus' argument on Justice. There is something here that is real, and that all ways has been.

The interesting thing about the entire debate of Justice in Plato is that it appears to be totally detached from the notion of Freedom. A feature that today we Westerns consider quintessential, that Freedom is a necessary precondition for any kind of substantive Justice. Justice, in the Classical tradition, doesn't seems to come by the side of Freedom. Maybe because the state of freedom and slavery for the Ancients was more of an accidental condition than the Modern concept of inherent rights.

In any case, a profound lecture of Plato is all ways a good start to think about our conceptions and ideas from a critical perspective; specially when it appears that all that seems to be debatable about politics was already treated somehow by the Ancient Greeks.