Part
II: The Age of Reason: Love At
Every Sight !
Part
III: Scientific Earthquakes and Philosophic Tornados
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Juvenile Insipience
Very often retrospective inspection performs marvels; very tenderly it rubs refreshening tiger balsam onto the strained heart muscles. Soothlich, as Spenser would say, the innocent bird of youth au jour le jour daydreams about white inaccessible Himalayan peaks.
Alas! As time passes by-and-by, the fiery Owl of Minerva is forced to inure herself to more gray earthly climates, carefully to soar over authoritarian bypasses and patriarchal bygones. But, the eveready slogan of progress inspires, its clamour aspires: per aspera ad astra! The ideological seeds are strewn to the four winds, even the wind itself is already sown. What will be reaped?
Father God & Godfather
For the time being, the earthly and heavenly harvest is determined by God, by Father, by Father God, by the Godfather, by the Padrino, by Our Father. Childlike insipience believes, just believes in about everything which anybody or anything great spits around as common sense, or vomits out as the "gospel truth". Everywhere, at school, before breakfast, before passing away to Alice in Wonderland, the password is Jesus, Christ, Jesus Christ. The same is valid for swearing, cursing and cursoring. Youth, still filled with Promethean élan, which still wants to thieve the Fire of the Gods, impetuously storms headlong into Christianity, is more Roman than the Roman Catholics, more Catholic than the Catholic Vaticans.
The Dark Ages : Total Eclipse of the Forties & Fifties !
Yeah ! Read the Catechism, the Holy Bible; study the Saints, the Holy Scriptures ! The proof lies in the eating of the religious pudding, drinking the holy blood of Jesus, in the eating of his sacred flesh, of his divine body. Only then, the Child of Jesus can pray : Hic Rhodus, hic salta, here is the spade, call it a spade, here is wine, call it wine. Surely, as time flows on, Phoenix realizes the veritas in vino.
But also this cup shall bypass innocent Youth, also this Socratic hemlock will vanish into smoggy polluted air. Also, the Great Father, who makes History, eventually appears before the rational Court of Final Judgement. The Judge pronounces his verdict as Reason-In-Itself, as Rational Intellect, as Intellectual Reason.
Adolescent Whirlwind
After the "sigh of the oppressed creature", after the "heart of a heartless world", logically, follows the demolition of a world which needs illusions to survive, which progressively produces genuflecting Zombies, guided by Crosses and Swastikas, which fabricates global giga-profits from the "sweat of the brow".
The Calm Before The Storm
Certainly, who sows the wind, will reap the storm, but the pathfinder of every heavy storm is a cool refreshening breeze. Leon Trotsky, the author of Permanent Revolution, of World Revolution, shortly before his assassination in Coyoacan, wrote: "Life is beautiful, enjoy it to the fullest !"
The "Stations of the Celestial Breeze" !
Farm Labour, Karoo Desert, Skyline of Cape Town, Table Mountain, Robben Island, Sharpeville Massacre, Love At First Sight, Correspondence Studies, Factory Work, Slums, Christopher Caudwell, Studies in a Dying Culture, Plechanov, The Role of the Individual in Society, Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto, Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, Mao-Tse-Tung, Guerrilla Warfare, Yu Chi Chan Club, National Liberation Front of South Africa, Repression, Suppression, Oppression, Apartheid, Scholarship, Exile.
Spitting into the Neckar : The Roaring Sixties !
Many
dream about becoming Cowboy film stars, then Governors,
and then Presidents of the United States of America; other Presidents
want
to convert themselves into a "Berliner", much later,
in the very same great tradition, another one wants to wage a
"Desert
Storm", wants to feel "chevere" in Caracas, and wants to win the "Nobel
Peace Prize" as international womanizer.
Many dream about seeing Paris, and then to die peacefully, others long to lose their hearts on the Neckar, in Heidelberg, others wish to stand on the Neckar Bridge in Tübingen, and to spit into the flowing water below, and then, at last, to live turbulently ever thereafter! Now, in the Glorious Sixties is the time when Great Men, Great Revolutionaries, make Revolution, make History. Spartacus, Lenin, Trotsky, Jose Martí, Lumumba, Ho-Chi-Minh, Fidel Castro, Ernest Mandel, ...
The masses must be mobilized, conscientized, organized : Anti-Apartheid, Anti-Imperialism, Anti-Authoritarianism, Long Live Anti-eism ! Writing revolutionary articles, holding mammoth lectures across Europe and North America, Addressing the United Nations, collecting funds for the South African revolution.
Maelstrom of Maturity
Socialist student leader Mussolini becomes the fascist "Il Duce"; Cuba cannot remain a Robinson Crusoe Island, Che is fed-up with Kabila in the Congo, the peasants of Bolivia are not so revolutionary after all, the Soviet Union and the GDR are not so socialist after all, the ANC of South Africa are not so anti-capitalist as they claim to be, the Black Panther movement is not so ferocious as it seems; the Red Army Faction in Germany does not seem to accomplish the Armed Struggle in Europe; Black September does not change the obscurity of the Arabian Future in the Middle East; ... What went wrong? Are Great Men not making History anymore? What is wrong with the great people, with the great races, with the masses? Is it a matter of being wrong or right at all?
The Age of Enlightenment: The Soaring Seventies !
Politics accomplished; University Studies absolved; Love at Second Sight; Dr. phil., lecturer at the Fachhochschule Darmstadt, publishing "Südafrika vor der Revolution ?", "Technische Intelligenz und Klassenkampf" in S. Fischer-Verlag. A Friend for life. What Now ? Quo Vadis ? One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward ?
George Orwell calls. "The Future lies in the Proles !" (Winston). Big Brother warns: "You are the last human being. Your kind is extinct!" The Holy Bible chants: "Who has ears to hear, let him hear!" Phoenix, however, is as blind as a bat; he claims that bats need neither eyes to see nor ears to hear!
Frantz Fanon, the Wretched of the Earth, invite to learn the next lesson of life. Régis Debray ushers in the "Revolution in the Revolution". What he meant by this, will only become clear when he is "bourgeoisified" later in the French Government. The same applies for Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the ardent student leader who stormed Paris in the sixties, and who later democratically co-operated, together with The Greens, in the Frankfurt City local government.
Experience has its Price, its Prize !
Paradise
Lost, Paradise Found. Love at Third Sight ! Blue
Bird, "Three Times A Lady!" Co-operative Socialism, Guyana, Burnham. A
Friend in Need, in Deed, indeed. Tropical Heat, Racial Dust,
Assassinations,
Strikes, again Repression, Oppression, Suppression, .... Depression !
A Daughter Found! A Daughter For Life! Like Mother,
like
Daughter!
Neither Great Races nor Small Races make Revolution, make History, emancipate themselves! Why? What did Plechanov say about the Role of the Individual in Society? No Answer !
Nigeria,
Racial Discrimination, "You are too White to
be a Black!",
University of port Harcourt, Professor of Political
Science,
.....
The Age of Intellect : The Sobering Eighties !
Say it in Spanish! In Castellano! When in Mérida, try to do it as the Meridians do it! But, not all roads lead to the Meridian capital, to the Andean consciousness. Junior, A Son, like Father, like Son, like Mother! Again : Anti-Apartheid, Long Live Che ! Long Live Mandela ! However, this Ole !, this Viva !, this Patria o Muerte!, have other roots, other connotations. They are deeply rooted in Roman Catholicism a la latinoamericana.
All over the medieval superstructure of the Madre Patria Espana still is taking its toll, still is infecting every walk of life, still lures to the bull-ring, still allures to the Vatican. Nobody can escape this fatal mental plague, least of all the "camaradas" or the "revolucionarios" ; the virus of the "theology of religion" invades all pores of "progressive" forces.
Marx and Che and the Pope meet each other here in Latin America; they give each other a warm comradely embrace, and all of them, in complete gentleman agreement and fraternal co-operation, eagerly participate in the world crusade of converting and conscientizing the poor, the masses, the workers, the proletariat, all human beings. Also, like Jesus Christ, like Che, like Marx and Engels, the mature Phoenix sets about to accomplish his historic task of mobilization, of conscientization. E contrario, when the revolutionary students and exploited masses were finished with him, he nearly gained a soul, and was heading straight for heavenly bliss. Finally, his very "comrades", who are beyond any salvation, saved him and brought him to reason, to Reason.
PART TWO
The
Age of Reason : Love At
Every Sight !