I love the way you move!

What parts or aspects of a person’s body do you find more attractive? Some people answer the hair, the face or the eyes. Other, less politically correct but usually honest at least, say the buttocks or breast… (I do not imply the former are not). Opinions on this topic thrive. Perhaps because there is a lot to be said… still.

Some people say eyes are special, as they are “the mirror of the soul”. You can supposedly find what there is in a person’s soul if you look at her eyes with a sharp discernment and acute attention. There is truth in this statement, somehow. In the end, sometimes people are afraid of being stared at the eyes and that cannot be without reason.

However, do we know people’s souls (minds) only by the eyes? Most would agree that there are many more ways: words, attitudes, expressions… But if it is not merely a matter of eye-contact, how do we know somebody’s soul after all? And that is the question, because we do, though sometimes our knowledge of others disappoints us.

Some people say they especially like the way people move. Not a part or aspect of their bodies, but how they move it. Maybe that is because if eyes are mirrors to the soul, body movement is its very activity (of which eye-movement is indeed a part!). Though unconsciously, we know about people’s behavior, temperament and feelings mainly by means of our experiencing their bodies’ movement. Though it might sound strange, if we look at this a bit closer, it would not appear so surprising.

Finally, how do we know about people’s feelings? By their face expressions, the way they walk, how fast they walk, how they move their hands… There is already research on the relationships between certain movements and certain states of mind (and that has been applied in some cases in order to detect cheaters). If we observed ourselves attentively, we would detect how our emotions would arise with correlated physical states: sweat, tickling, trembling, shivers, chicken skin, ticks…

It would be interesting to analyze in deep how our bodies express ourselves. I would even dare say our movement is the very activity of our minds (souls) as far as they are observable. Maybe somebody perspicuous enough would be able to read your character and emotions only by watching for a while. Furthermore, he could be aware of the activity of her mind/soul by observing the activity of her body. A phenomenology of bodily movement, so to call it, might be promising for our knowledge of ourselves.

Death

I had a strong contact with death in 2010. While I had not known of anybody among my acquaintances having died at a young age, three were gone in 2010. In January, a friend I made when I started my unconcluded studies in systems engineering. He died of underdiagnosed cancer. When I saw him in the coffin, knowing then he was not going to get up again, I regretted the end of his fun, friendly character, his jokes and liveliness.

In July, one of my school classmates. He was living and working in another city, so the news came a month after. Sudden heart attack. He passed away in his room, unnoticed to the world for several hours. I started to think why the jolly guys were leaving, why them, when we need them so much in this world full of excessive seriousness and hatred.

December. One my former students at university. Cardiac arrest. What a young boy dying at that age, just having got his university major without making it to the graduation ceremony. Death seems to come like this, all of a sudden, not leaving time for goodbyes or amendments.

All this has to make you think seriously when it happens to you, when death walks so close to you. But that was not all for me. My most dramatic intimation with death that year could seem a lot more futile, as nobody died then.

I was on a plane preparing to take off, all comfortable in my chair as the machine moved forward. Absorbed in my thoughts, I started to consider the possibility of the plane crashing in the air. I would surely die, I thought, I would die and nothing could help it. Though I also knew it was quite unlikely, so much that I had no fear at all.

But death, if not then, would come some time, sooner or later. I knew that was absolutely sure. And so I started to wonder what would happen when I die. What is there after death? What will it be like? It seems there will be nothing: no thoughts, no feelings, no bodily sensations… Nothing.

Nothing!

A sudden terror took me, so strong that I could not help trying to get distractions, explanations or anything that could calm me down. An enormous terror of death, impossible to control or overcome. At least for some seconds, but time passed so slowly that it could have been hours and it would have been almost the same for me. When I was just starting to control it, or painfully trying, the plane took off and I suddenly felt released from my burden.

However, that awareness of the fear of death has never abandoned me since then. Not that intense (or otherwise I could not live), but still present. 2010 made me impossible to forget death, but I accept that impossibility as a gift. Nishitani Keiji (a 20th century Japanese thinker who deserves quite more recognition than he has achieved) once said that death is not an event awaiting us in the future, but a reality that always lures under our feet, always at one with life. We realize this in moments when our lives seem to lose their meaning, as when we lose a loved one, or when our most cherished projects fail.

I was surely far from being in sorrow when I was on that plane, but I could see death then with such clarity that I could not keep staring at it. So terrifying it was. And somehow it is still there, I know. And I also know there is no use of ignoring it anymore. We need to prepare for death, we need to accept it and be able to give up life when the moment comes. So I am trying to do, and that clarity in purpose is the gift I have been bestowed on.

***

For those interested in Nishitani, I recommend you reading his Religion and Nothingness. Translated by Jan Van Bragt. University of California Press. Berkeley: 1982 (you can find it on Google Books and Amazon).

On Hugging

(Este artículo en español aquí)

On Sunday, November 21, 2010, a “free-hug” event was performed in Bogotá (Colombia), organized by the Couchsurfing network. The same has been done in other cities of the world for some years (perhaps since 2006, the year the video above was published). For those still unacquainted with stuff like that, this is how it goes: a group of people stand at some pedestrian hotspot holding “free hugs” signs and offering free hugs to anyone who wants them or accepts them.

Why to do it? Maybe that is the first question that arises out of this. Juan Mann, the free-hugs pioneer, would merely say that sometimes a hug is all you need (www.freehugscampaign.org). But quite likely those who engaged on the “huggaton” that Sunday in Bogotá did not know well how to answer that question. It took us by surprise (yes, I was implied). In my case, “for nothing” or “just to give a hug” is all I got to say in response.

But I was clear about why I decided to participate. I wondered if I would be able to give a hug to anybody who asked me, anybody, without discrimination. That is not the case in daily life. And if you are Buddhist (whis is my case) that is an important sign, or so I thought, because it signals whether you are willing to commit to the ideal of universal compassion or not, as impossible as it seems. Who would be willing to try to extend her love to every creature after all?

It is obvious that free-hugging is far below that ideal. But it also seems far beyond what we would accept to do for others. And what is it worth for a world full of tremendous needs and problems after all?

But what if Juan Mann is right (at least partially)? Though a sheer hug seems irrelevant, understanding its potential requires something like the experience of free-hugging. A potential hard to define, indeed. It calms down, transmits a feeling of safety, fuels love-like feelings, makes problems forgettable or at least less menacing. I am not intending here to repeat common-place phrases, but rather to describe how it felt to hug in those circumstances.

Underestimating the potential of free-hugging is a mistake worse than overestimating it. Derisively labeling it as romanticism is too simplistic. Examining why it causes the effects it causes is much more interesting. What is there in hugging that we seemingly need, or even miss? What does it cause and what does it tell us about the way we forge and tighten our emotional bonds? Starting from that point, does free-hugging around have any effect in society? Or in oneself at least? You can believe whatever you want about it, but in order to take seriously the issue of what hugging means for us, it is indispensable to examine the very experience of hugging. If we don’t, we would be like virgins talking about sex.

What is Philosophy? A History of Thought Oppression

(En español aquí)

What I express here may just reflect a worry. Who knows if I need more “therapy” than philosophical elaboration of my ideas here. After that warning, let us go to the point:

Thought is sponteanously free, free and diverse. It does not only vary from one individual to another, it also varies within one and the same individual. Then it seems not easily constrainable, determinable. Of course that does not mean it does not have its constraints, external or internal. And even if we pursue the ideal of freedom of thought, thought has its internal constraints.

Does this have any consequence for the problem of elucidating what philosophy is? If this elucidation takes the form of a normative characterization, of a normative delimitation, one could suspect that any such attempt is inevitably restrictive.

Why? Someone might ask. If philosophy is a particular activity among others, with its own particular normativity, it should be possible to characterize it, or at least approach to a characterization. But the character of philosophy as a particular activity appears to me doubtful.

This doubt is ready to emerge after a consideration of the matter from an ample viewpoint -I mean, as free from biases as possible-. From such an attitude, we could see that thought emerges from natural tendencies in man, tendencies to wonder, to raise questions, to submerge into them -in brief, to engage in thought-. And, as such, it could not only appear, but actually appears everywhere there are men.

What we call philosophy is the sofistication of thought, so understood. As long as thought acquires techniques and a normativity, we are in the realm of philosophy. But the life of (any) normativity is not the essence of philosophy. What it is essentially and what moves it internally is the dynamic character of thought. Without the live activity of concrete “thinking-things” (so to speak), it amounts to nothing, it does not exist. On the other hand, a certain normativity of philosophy cannot be considered the only one possible -or can it?- Could we not imagine there are others? And do they not depend on the goals pursued by thought -or alongside thought-?

Some might reply that, viewed in this way, it is not possible to distinguish philosophy from other activities, where thought is also present. Then, philosophy could be anything, and so it would ultimately turn to be nothing. I accept -and how can I not?- that philosophy must be considered as different from other activities involving thought, like science, mathematics, social science… Different, even though it can be permeated by these other activities, or also permeate them. Then, it seems that it must be possible to elucidate what distinguishes it from the rest.

To this I answer by stating two points. First, that the border that surrounds philosophy and makes it something different from other activities could be elucidated, but it is also fuzzy; from a far distance it might appear clear, but as long as we get closer, it gets harder and harder to delineate, and impossible to delineate in the end. Was Darwin doing science or philosophy? Are Kant’s reflections on God, or Nishitani’s reflections on sin, God or emptiness, the product of philosophy or of religion? Is the Dao Dejing (Tao Teking) literature, religion or philosophy? In many cases, these questions cannot be answered if we expect clear divisions or sharp delimitations.

Second: almost whenever a definition of philosophy is suggested, it has normative value, that is, far from merely describing what philosophers in fact do, it prescribes what they should do. But though philosophy has its rules and procedures, trying to define it presupposes -if definition is indeed prescription- that the normativity of the field can be clearly stated and established. And that, in turn, presupposes that all the possible paths of philosophy can be anticipated, at least partially. But who could be so pretentious?

And here it might be objected: how could we not clearly characterize the normativity of philosophy, if other disciplines can do the same? But philosophy is, precisely in opposition to other activities implying engagement in thought, the domain of indeterminacy, the exploration of new paths of possibilities, the retaking of those that were abandoned but might disclose possibilites again, trial and error, heuristics. Wherever problems are unclear, methods do not exist, wherever there is not enough clarity, wherever thought is confused, there is work for the philosopher.

This has an interesting implication: It is not only that the borders between philosophy and other engagements are fuzzy. Furthermore, wherever we find thought trying to find its way in the middle of chaos and confusion, there we find an engagement in philosophy. The seed of philosophy is present in the very core of any engagement in thought, and it will have to sprout every time paradigms start to fail, methods must be changed, concepts and categories have to be reconsidered, remodeled or even replaced… in brief, every time thought faces chaos again.

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