1 Corinthians 4

In order to show that Christian religion is not about judging and chastising people for their actions; that the idea of guilt is not a tool to influence and dominate the weak willed by some corrupt priests; and that corrupt priests and clergy as well as hypocrite believers are not inherent of the Christian faith, but part of the sinful nature of the human condition (that is shared by every human being with the only exception of the Virgin Mary), St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians says:

"(1) This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. (2) Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. (3) I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. (4) My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. (5) Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God."

"(6) Now, brothers and sisters, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, 'Do not go beyond what is written.' Then you will not be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against the other. (7) For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?"

Guilt has no meaning in Christianity without forgiveness and redemption. It is not about a faith of self-flagellating people but of humble acceptance of our wrongs and hope in forgiveness through God's (and human) love. Those that believe that they can use Christian faith to judge and chastise others are deeply flawed in their interpretation of the message of Christ, and only give a weapon for those that attack our faith in the name of misconceived ideas of progress and freedom. Christianity is a faith of love and hope, that can only be achieved when we admit and start by our humble position in this life and not boasting at gifts that are given to us by God. St. Paul, with his respective coherence, tells us that even judging ourselves is flawed because only God can penetrate fully within the dark purposes of our spirit. If we don't even know ourselves fully, how do we expect to judge others that we are so far from knowing to heart? Christianity demands full tolerance to the wrongs of others; an extremely difficult feat to achieve; sainthood is the quality of those that reach it.

Luzardo and Barquero: the mirrors of our generation

Reading Doña Bárbara (1929), probably the most acclaimed Venezuelan novel by Rómulo Gallegos, I was touched by a conversation that so vividly portrayed the deep rooted feelings of the Venezuelan spirit. The story takes place in the Venezuelan llanos (or Great Plains): an endless expanse of flat grassland, scorched by the sun in the dry season, and in the wet turned by torrential into fever-ridden swamps and lakes; it is the home of a wild and warlike breed, a racial mixture from Indian, white and black stock, hardened by their savage surroundings and capable of great endurance on horseback. Santos Luzardo (the hero), returns home after years spent in Caracas pursuing his university studies. He has become an urbane man and his ways totally contrast with the wild ways of the llanos. He has a conversation with his elder and only cousin left. His name is Lorenzo Barquero, who also did his studies in Caracas years before, when he was the most promising member of the family; but now he is a drunk, useless and decrepit man living in a tiny, stinking and dirty hut, after losing all his properties to the dangerous woman known as Doña Bárbara. Santos Luzardo is coming back (as his cousin Lorenzo did before him), and is determined to change the savage and semi-barbaric ways of the llanos, with the optimist view of a man of progress. However Lorenzo's state is absolutely disencouraging. Here is part of the conversation between both [the translation is mine]:

Santos: ..."It is necessary to kill the centaur", you said. I, of course, didn't know what a centaur could be and not even could I explain myself why the llaneros carried it inside them... Years after, in Caracas, a handout reached my hands of a speech you had delivered in I don't know what patriotic meeting, and imagine my impression when I found the famous phrase there. Do you remember that speech? The topic was: the centaur is barbarism and, therefore, it must be done with...
Lorenzo: ...Look at me carefully, Santos Luzardo! This specter of a man that was, this human wreck, this carrion that speaks to you, was your ideal. I was that which you said previously, and now I am this that you see. Aren't you afraid, Santos Luzardo?
Santos: Afraid, why?
Lorenzo: No! I'm not asking you for you to answer me! But for you to hear this instead: that Lorenzo Barquero who you have spoken of was nothing but a lie; the truth is this that you see now. You are also a lie that will banish soon. This land does not forgive... I started to realize that my intelligence, that which everyone called my great talent, did not work but while I was talking; as soon as I fell silent the mirage would also banish and I couldn't understand absolutely nothing. I felt the lie of my intelligence and my sincerity. Do you realize? The lie of your own sincerity, which is the worse that can happen to a man... To kill the centaur! He! He! Don't be an idiot, Santos Luzardo! Do you think that that of killing the centaur was pure rhetoric? I assure you that it exists. I've heard it neighing. Every single night it passes by here. And not only here; there, in Caracas, also. And far beyond too. Wherever one of us is... he hears the centaur's neighing. You've heard it too and that's why you are here. Who has said that it is possible to kill the centaur? Me? Spit on my face, Santos Luzardo. The centaur is an entelechy. A hundred years it has galloped over this land and another hundred will pass still. I thought myself civilized, my family's first civilized, but it was enough to be told: "come and avenge your father", for the barbarian inside me to emerge. The same has happened to you... Santos Luzardo! Look yourself in me! This land does not forgive!

I edited the conversation so as to show what I think is more interesting in it. It speaks, I think, about the deepest reality in Venezuelan society (I'm tempted to say Latin America, but it might be too bold). I am of those that think that not infrequently poets and novelists portray the human condition in a more acute and spiritual way than any philosopher or scientist. Rómulo Gallegos might have interpreted the tragedy/comedy of our national experience in the best way possible, in the dialectics between our will to progress (in Santos Luzardo) individually and collectively, and our inclination toward barbarism (in Lorenzo Barquero). Venezuelan history is a constant tension between these two forces; when we seem to be on the right track of what we think (what we like to think) is the road toward perfection, the internal forces of our turbulent and wild spirit, deeply rooted in the memory of our war of Independence, emerges as a destructive force that, cloaked in the disguise of justice and fairness, it immerses us in backwardness. Lorenzo Barquero is a metaphor of all of us, the man that tasted both worlds, that personifies both tendencies.

Our national history is filled with centaurs. The war of Independence produced tons of them. Bolivar was the first one (and also the one that combined Santos and Lorenzo in its greatest expression); Boves, not being a Venezuelan born, was also possessed by it in its most barbaric form. Páez was the first one to carry the name explicitly, and that by the end of his life tried to tame it (successfully as an individual and failing absolutely as the nation's leader). Both 19th and 20th century Venezuela has centaurs ruling and being ruled (in the bodies of the leaders, and the bodies of their followers and enemies alike). The 20th century has the more technocratic expressions. And when we seemed to have taken our leave from this tragic/comedy tradition, the centaur revived again, now in its most gruesome form. All Venezuelans know (once again) how is it like.

The figure of the progressive man in Santos is extremely interesting: a man deceived by the taste of modernity. He is our traditionally tragic hero, whereas Lorenzo has reached the level of our comedy hero. "Wherever one of us is... he hears the centaur's neighing". I can't but totally agree with this statement. I that know the country in which I was raised, and the symbols and feelings that it has produced in my being, I hear the centaur's neighing. And this last lines I write for all of my friends and the Venezuelan youth that today study abroad, many of whom were forced by the circumstances. Santos Luzardo is our mirror. And Lorenzo Barquero might be our destiny. The former we already are; the latter is a matter of choice. I don't believe in progress; everything is in eternal return. Venezuelan history: the eternal return of the centaur. Who wants to be part of this play? And what would be your role in it? Ask yourself these questions and choose. Lorenzo asks "Aren't you afraid, Santos Luzardo?" I would say yes.

"Everything becomes and recurs eternally - escape is impossible! - Supposing we could judge value, what follows? The idea of recurrence as a selective principle, in the service of strength (And barbarism!!)" Nietzsche.

A good letter to the bishops and its shameful response

Today the Vatican released a letter with its new guidelines in order to combat the cancer of child abuse by priests. It is part of the Church's response to the wave of accusations that has been taking place for years. No one can legitimately say that the Vatican is ignoring the issue, unless a deep rooted liberal hatred for everything sacred and holy is at place. And, sadly enough one more time, that is the case. Critics are disappointed with the Vatican's letter to the bishops. But it couldn't be the other way around. For them the Catholic Church is an ideological enemy. They want to see us finished. Today it becomes clearer to me that even if tomorrow the Vatican centralizes all the power possible to impose a solution from above, they would find any other argument, however unfair and contrary to common sense, and wield it against us one more time. In their hearts they don't care about the concrete cases of child abuse! That's just part of a discourse of discrediting the Church and its influence in the world, because of all their atheist ideology and secularist programme. Here there is the news in its more neutral content: http://www.monstersandcritics.

com/news/europe/news/article_1639478.php/Critics-dismiss-Vatican-guidlines-on-sex-abuse-by-clergy

For liberals it's not a matter of child abuse. They just simply hate the Church, and it happens that this is the most powerful discourse against it. That's all. All the liberal speech, unproductive as it is, is hypocritical ideology. They fill their mouths with fairness and justice, and when the Church tries to improve and move into that direction, they answer contemptuously to this improvement. If the Pope addresses the issue, they say it is not enough. If the Vatican appoints some people to draft a document to move forward a policy, they say it's ineffective and useless. Now the Church is telling the bishops to cooperate with the civil authorities, and they argue that it is all a cover up. Here there is a better account of the criticism: http://www.washingtontimes

.com/news/2011/may/16/vatican-suggests-bishops-report-abuse-police/?page=3

I will tell you what I think is behind the critics argument. The liberals solution is centralizing power! They want the Vatican to become some kind of modern big government to command directly the bishops in their tasks! Unbelievable isn't it?! Do they really think that the Pope is some kind of President or Prime Minister? A guy that just simply expands the Vatican's bureaucracy so that it acts as they want it to act? It doesn't work that way. The church is a federated body. It is the same argument all over again: in order to improve civil rights, give more power to the central authority. And if they do, then of course the Vatican's spendings will go up, and it will require more money, and then they will wield the old tautological argument that the Church only wants to take away your money from you, because in the end it's a business and not a honest religion, like if everything could be reduced to a merchant's ethos, or utilitarian morality. Here is an additional source in order to create more perspective: http://www.nytimes.com/201

1/05/17/world/europe/17vatican.html

Conclusion: so anywhere we see it, it will always be the same: (a) the Church is not doing enough with its "unbinding" rules, they say; ergo they must create binding rules. (b) But to have binding rules you need the bureaucratic apparatus to enforce the rules (basic common sense political knowledge); ergo you need to expand the central bureaucracy to reach the periphery of the Church in order to make sure that the bishops are obeying you. (c) So in order to make the rules binding, you need to spend more on your new expanded bureaucratic apparatus of regulation; ergo the Church need more resources and its gonna look for them. (d) The Church's expansion is a proof that the only thing they want is money from you! They are all fat hypocrites that don't care about your soul but about your pocket! Their presence is not only spurious (because Jesus story is a lie to manipulate the ignorant masses from which you form a part of, after all), but also costly and uneconomical; ergo, we should get rid of the Church! (An argument that has been stressed for a long time now, since the most infamous and shameful writer in the history of the West wrote; namely Voltaire). Better have that money in the pocket of the bourgeoisie that is giving you a job at least!!!

It all comes to the same thing, so it seems. Liberals, their secular programme and their atheist ideology want to see us all, the Catholic Church of God, extinguished. We shouldn't care about their argument; what matters to us is their final malignant goal.

A note on Internal Relations

Writing a paper for my class of dialectics, I've come up with this quick explanation of what the philosophy of internal relations mean. It is extremely short, but I offer it to my readers, especially to those closer to philosophy, to know their position regarding this controversial school of thought initiated by Hegel. Let it be known that many of the things said following I consider them correct, contrary to what analytical philosophy claims. It says:

Internal relations cannot see the world as a sum of objects. The word “object” implies that there is a finished unit that is separable from the rest. This is not the case. Internal relations assume that any object is not an object proper, but a thing that is determined by all the relations this thing has with the things that it is not; that is, with its environment. For example: a chair is not in itself a unit, because a chair needs space to exists; however space is not a part of what the chair is, but is an indispensable environmental condition without which the chair cannot exist. In this sense the chair’s actual existence is determined by the space in which it is. It means that in the real existence of the chair by necessity there must be the existence of space. This relation of the chair with space (that the chair cannot be understood without the space in which it remains, but acknowledging that the space does not form part of the chair itself) is an internal relation. Basically no-thing stands by itself without the use of abstraction. That a thing exists implies everything that that thing is not, but without which it cannot exist. The thing is by virtue of everything that it is not. Because every thing has a relation to all the rest that it is not, then its determination in the real world takes the form of relations and not of objects. An object would imply that the thing can be taken outside all its external determinations without ceasing to exist.

The relation is internal because things and facts are not seen as objects but as relations. A chair stands in opposition to everything the chair is not. This that the chair is not forces the chair to have boundaries, and hence the chair is intelligible and can exist. If the chair is not related to everything it is not, then it would have no boundaries because it stands in isolation from the rest (it would be a thing by itself without needing anything else), and the chair would become universal; that is everything, which is, of course, nonsense. It is implicit in the bodily existence of the chair everything that the chair negates by virtue of not being it.

As an external relation we take the chair as given in its objective condition, and then relating itself to other things in a mechanic-like structure, like crashing or forcing themselves. This is the path of physics. The chair does not need the rest to be understood, and the rest only plays a role of modifying the chair by having contact with it. External relations are those that take place between finished objects in their physical contacts. In the philosophy of internal relations what the chair is not is part of the structure of being of the chair itself. The chair cannot be understood without its environment. Its environment also determines what the chair is.

A coarse example: A chair is a chair as long as it is used as a chair. Why? Because what makes a chair what it is is its relation to its environment by virtue of having a particular use. If we take the chair and use it to beat someone, the relation with its environment has completely changed. Now it is not being used as a chair but as a blunt weapon. Dialectically it means that the thing in question is no longer a chair but a chair-shaped blunt weapon. The thing changed in being by virtue of a change in its relations to the environment without any actual change in its physical shape. What make a thing what it is, then, is the sum of its relations to its environment. Because of this reason, nothing can be taken as an object in itself, because nothing stands objectively in itself, but in relation to what it is not (its environment).

An elegant example: if we take the Latin alphabet, we have certain units we call letters. If we take A, we can say that in itself it stands as an A: that is A=A, which is a basic proposition of formal logic. However if we want to see A as an internal relation we can also say that: A=-B,-C,-D…-Z. This is saying exactly the same thing but not from the vantage point of A as an object and finished unit in contrast with the rest, but A being part of an environment of letters as the structure of its being. The other letters, by virtue of their negative value, set the boundaries for each positive unit. So if we take a set of letter in this way “-B…-Z” the only possible solution is “A”, because the only one thing excluded from the set of negative determination is precisely the positivity of A.

We can go further in proving the negative quality of everything when seen as internally related with its environment. Let us not take any thing in particular but every thing except the thing that we are not taking. By taking everything except the one thing, this one thing is already implicit in everything taken, because is the only thing that remains missing. We can say that B…Z=-A. The letter “A” becomes a negative determination of the whole when seen from the vantage point of the whole minus what we are not taking. This negative value or determination is what we call contradiction in dialectics. And it is because of this reason that dialectics is a logic of contradictions.

The important thing to understand is that a thing never stands in isolation as an object. The mentioning of anything has implicitly everything else that it is not, because the thing itself excludes the rest. So we can see the thing from the vantage point of the rest, from the negation of the rest. Take something as everything that it is not and we will, by necessity, have what the thing is because it is the remaining from everything that a thing is not. Conclusion: everything includes within its structure of being everything that it is not, because its concrete existence depends on negating the concrete existence of everything else. The structure of being of any thing and fact is determined by contradictions between it and the rest.

In this sense a thing can be abstractly divided in infinite parts. If any thing stands in relation to a whole that remains its environment, also the thing stands as a whole in relation to its parts. The conclusion of this analysis is that the most important hypotheses of dialectics is that the development process of every thing consists in the contradictory relations of its internal parts, not external influences. There are no external influences in dialectics because they are taken to be also part of a bigger whole. This is the inevitable result of an analysis that insists in taking things not as objects but as relations. This is probably the most important aspect of dialectics, and I am going to explain it further ahead. Now I move to explain what dialectics means by the word contradiction.

What is Truth?

I'm going to honor this special day by quoting one of the most interesting and enlightening dialogues in recorded history and the Holy Scripture:

‎33 Pilate entered the praetorium again and called Jesus, and said to him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" 34 Jesus answered, "Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?" 35 Pilate answered, "Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me; what have you done?" 36 Jesus answered, "My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world." 37 Pilate said to him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice."

‎38 Pilate said to him, "What is truth?" (John 18:33-38).

This conversation takes place just before Christ punishment and execution. But its enlightening by the fact that it takes place between an elevated man from a particular culture at that time, and a pagan man from the prevailing civilization. Pilate has more reasons to doubt that the Jews, because he is totally out of context. However contrary to the Jews he gives Jesus the benefit of doubt. Maybe this man is not a criminal after all, and what he has to say may be important. The priests on the contrary are totally in context, they are partials in the debate and want Jesus dead because he is saying things contrary to their privileged status quo. Pilate has no reason to think this way and asks him honestly "Are you the King of the Jews", and then he points out that he is not a Jew, he has no reason to believe or disbelieve him. For him is almost a matter of indifference. For the Jewish priests it is not. There is no crime in Jesus words and Pilate is more driven by an intellectual interest of discovering what is so annoying for the Jews. His final decision of executing Jesus is only based on political reasons: preserving the peaceful status quo of a very turbulent province of the Roman Empire. He does never believe that Jesus is guilty; he washes his hands for he is not committing the crime of injustice. Pilate's decision is driven by the reason of state.

Finally he asks "What is truth?" His scepticism is the beginning from which faith can spring. He is not denying Jesus. Only the religious bigotry of the priests gave no space for Jesus argument. Their status and wealth depends on not understanding Jesus words. Even if they believe them to be true, it is a inconvenient truth. The debate between the pagan Roman and Jesus is the first encounter between Christian faith and the breakdown of the pagan world. Pontius Pilate is the first Roman to face Jesus, but his circumstances don't allow him to take him seriously. He follows political needs completely unaware of the historical consequences of his decision. That this execution would change the face of the Earth he is completely ignorant of.

A very curious character Pontius Pilate is. How many men find themselves in the precise place and precise moment where history is about to take a radical shift, and are totally unaware of it?

A reflection, a poem and an unusual story

On this rainy morning Phoebus visited me, I think. I'm going to post three different texts out of this single post: One reflection, one poem that hopefully is going to be well received (even though I'm aware that it can be really bad. I'm no professional poet) and finally an unusual short story. They are not related so you can go straight to the reading that calls more your attention.

Nostalgia or Pessimism
There are minds that look for something beyond what the world of senses can offer us. Minds that are so empowered by imagination that find in the world insufficient intellectual stimulation and they look in ideas, forms and symbols that which can't be given by the spirit of our times. I'm not saying anything profound here, and I will explain why. I still remember the fantasies I used to play with when I was a kid: first it was the dinosaurs in my earliest infancy; for a time I feed from Star Wars until I converted into a trekker in my teenage hood. Later on I found feed for my imagination in The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons, the world of magicians and monsters. I was always desperately looking for these treasures of creativity in which I could play in my mind and rest from the humdrum spirit of modern times. Once I've exploited enough of them, I would usually move away into another world of discovery. Realism can be very tiresome for some people, and we find in fiction what materialism lacks in essence (matter itself has no essence, but the thought we have about it, making thinking essential and experience vacuous) My point is, I'm still that imaginative mind that flies into distant worlds. I've come to realize that in those moments of realist disenchantment with the world, today I go back in time into ancient societies. Or as Machiavelli once beautifully put it:

"When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely".

My nostalgia consists in this longing for a world that no longer exists and lies far away, lost in time. The magic springs from their reality: they existed (and this is a strength that no fictional creation can match). They were real once. Today we (I) recreate their life in our (my) minds when this world of us become too absorbing. I share with Machiavelli this playground. Our creativity looks back what we know can't be found forward. This is the reason why I can't be a progressive or a liberal; nostalgia can turn into pessimism; longing for the past is contempt toward the future. My vantage point is not human rights, nor the proletariat. My vantage point is not the economy, climate change or the bourgeoisie. My vantage point is, my friends, Ancient Greece.



A poem without a name
The train moves, it does not stop.
The spirit of our times, driven like a train,
aiming forward, without restraint.
A moment still, a beautiful moment,
gone forever, nothing stays here,
everything moves, just like the train,
without rest, without refrain.

It slows down, it speeds up, it does not stop.
What do I see? Workers making it real,
making it move, like history, like our times,
moving forward, you can't deceive.
Board the train, it's called life,
the moment still, when it was here, it seemed too real,
then the train arrives, and you have no option,
you board to survive.

Station, next station, industrialization moving you forward,
from birth to youth, to bloom and with luck, to old age.
A love I had, a love that was real,
and like reality, a train also came,
with its moment of depart one day at Union Square,
a love that was real, it came to go, not to stay,
we boarded our different trains,
survival made its claim.

That beautiful moment, it didn't survive;
that still, that was never real.
This wind, that blooming tree, those clouds,
those mating pigeons, my breath and my mouth;
this rain, that bulb, my pain.
Beautiful moment, you are gone.
The train came, and I departed.
I'll never see you again, driven by industrialization,
survival made its claim.


An Unusual Short Story
One day a man was teleported from distant past into Grand Central Terminal. That man was Aristotle. Nothing physically impossible happened. Matter was not added to our time. Like scientist and science fiction authors claim, matter just changed, like is happening right now as the reader reads these lines. This time it turned out to be Aristotle to which matter changed. A very curious man indeed, right there, but the New Yorker couldn't care less, living as she does in a city filled with curiosities. What an unfortunate man indeed he was, brought from the polis to the nation times. In sooth, everyone thought he was a homeless, and an eccentric one, like many others, with a long white beard and a queer colorful robe. He thought he was in Olympus, with all this electric lights, with the high blue ceiling picturing the stars, the golden clock in the middle and the huge foreign flag. Everything too alien for a man of his intelligence. Then he thought that that might be the Tartarus. Everyone was dressing like barbarians; this couldn't be the Olympus or the Elysium. Or can the Gods look so differently to us the Hellenes? Almost like a boy, he seated on the stairs, lost as he was, wondering as he is, lost in his thoughts. "Where am I? What is this incredible place? What kind of illusion I'm suffering from?" Those were the questions that he was trying to figure out when a policeman forced him to stand up. It is not allowed to sit on Gran Central's stairs. Aristotle might have felt more at home if he would have teleported into the Metropolitan, not a train station! So he came out into the streets, where the tall buildings, the yellow cabs and the horrible weather made their effects. "This must be a dream! This is not possible!" Some people thought he must have been some kind of drug addict. He definitively looked so, staring as he was, at all the world around him, people pushing him aside and one or two yelling at him "move out of the way!" He walked down 42nd street, not even the numbers could be recognized. And the Chrysler building, high above ground, resembled a spectacular marvel. Everything was marvelous. Everything was out of proportion. Everything was horrible to this man's eyes. Like all stories without endings, this one will stop here for lack of development, and just add that Aristotle, in all his wisdom, was last seen sleeping on a bench in Bryan Park, totally alone, speaking a foreign language no one could understand, reading from letters no news paper would print, thinking in ideas no one could imagine in modern times.

On the Dentist Chair

Time for a casual tale. I just came from the dentist, and up to now I can officially consider myself an experienced patient with these people. Normally you wouldn't think about this, and drop the memory once you are out, but the difference between how they proceed here in New York from home has kept me wondering.

Today I was received by an Indian woman, who had the particular feat of being butterfingered. And as a native from India, she also had this way of speaking that makes all Indians have the most hilarious accent of the English language. But she was really sweet, I give her that. Every once in a while (every 30 seconds or so) she would keep asking "are you okay?", non stop till the end of the one hour consultation. She would even give me a summary of all the possible courses of action and ask me what I would like to do first, which is a very curious question because I had no idea what she was talking about. Then something happened twice that as far as I remember never happened to me back home: she would call a supervisor, like a senior dentist, in order to check her work on me. The old man was a Chinese (naturally). I mean, he could be from Japan or Vietnam, but for the sake of convenience let us assume he was a Han from Taiwan. In all my dentist consultations here, this senior dentist would come, take a second look and give the seal of approval. I thought maybe because they are students, but I'm not so sure. They don't look THAT young.

All this seems common ground. But it occurred to me to assume the position of the patient as a vantage point, and not simply dismiss it as an uncomfortable experience. Here you are, lying on this burdensome couch (if it can benignly be called a couch), with your mouth open, and some unknown person sticking metallic objects into your mouth for an hour or more. In the case of the sweet Indian woman, her clumsy style made water spill all over my face all over again. But the truth is that we are in a highly vulnerable position here! If the mafia is looking to kill you, definitively doing it at the dentist chair would be the way to go!! With all this piercing objects, miniature drills and plastic cables there are many options that can come to my mind, and it wouldn't even take a minute. But then the sweet Indian woman with her insistent and comically pronounced "are you okay?" couldn't have been a hitman. We haven't got to that level yet.

Then the supervisor would come in, take a look, and then they would start a discussion of whatever was going on (in both their not-so-unusual-anymore accents). Surrounded by all this objects and technology, with lights aiming at your face like if you were in an interrogation room, these doctors over you speaking this unintelligible language with all its codes and meanings, you start to realize that you are in a laboratory, and you are the subject of investigation. The difference is that they don't ask a rat for permission to do anything with it, and the rat cannot sue for malpractice (and, of course, the rat doesn't get charged). But the truth is that you are being investigated, inspected, studied; and technology is being applied to you, knowledge is being used over you, methods are being tested and practiced through you. No one likes to be subject of scientific experimentation, but this is what we do for the sake of health; and a very important aspect of health with sensible aesthetical repercussion: our teeth. A woman can live proudly with small breasts. But can we proudly live without teeth?

And this brings me to my conclusion. I have, what I think, is a very plausible hypotheses. The reason why we start seeing people smiling with their teeth out in the open, that we trace as far back as middle 20th century, and not before, it's because of the invention of dentistry. Let's be serious, I don't remember any important picture, painting or sculpture of any important or unimportant person portraying an open smile. And I don't think it would be because of Benedictine bias against laughing. Make the test, google for the pictures of all the famous people previous to middle 20th century. No one is showing their teeth. Was it because those were less happy times then? I don't think so. The most reasonable answer is because they had no teeth.

Picture Immanuel Kant, in all his wisdom, without teeth in his mouth. Why would he smile for the painter? How about Mary Antoinette who must have lost some teeth before losing her head? We can bear Julius Caesar's baldness, but we don't like to imagine him conquering Gaul with a black whole on his front denture. That would make him look like a redneck. Queen Victoria, Empress of the Universe, or Elizabeth I Queen of heretic England, not so charming anymore. Maybe Wagner was not so ireful as he looks in his picture, but was simply hiding his lack of teeth, so as everyone else. And maybe an enlightened mind like Nietzsche discovered the all too obvious solution of letting his mustache grow insanely, and now he wouldn't look so insane himself but a practical man hiding his horrid denture.

Anyways, we have something to thank to dentistry, and not only avoiding the hellish toothache. Today we are compensating for all the millenia of humans representations without open smiles by exploiting our current photograph technology like if there were no tomorrow; a compliment for progress.