The man: a strong rope between an armchair or the scout patrol

When do we insist so much on being a permanent project? It is as if we were not happy with ourselves. As if we wanted to run away. Whose? Do we? How strange are these phrases! How strange the "we" in these phrases! "Man is a god when he dreams, a beggar when he reflects" said Friedrich Hölderin. Even the German poet makes us share with him his experience of dream and frustration. I recently read a new biography written by Harold Lamb. This time it was about the life of "Suleiman the Magnificent." With this there have already been four biographies written by Harold Lamb that I have read: "Charlemagne", "Cyrus the Great" and, of course, "Genghis Khan". And I say ‘of course’, because this was the first one I read when I was around fourteen. And every time that I read a biography of these great men of the past, I am prey to the dream and the dominant spirit that I felt in my adolescence, a long time ago.

They were different times. I left my neighbourhood environment to take classes at the school that remained in the centre of Santiago. And I woke up very early so I could take the bus, which was quite a feat even getting on. On Saturdays, however, I went to Boy Scout activities in the afternoon. I remember that in this context, one of the most inspiring adventures of my life began: the Mongoose Patrol. A handful of boys, which included me, were going to forge a brotherhood that would last for years. During which we slept, we played and ate together in many camps. We compete against our adversaries, the other patrols, for being the best, for having the best symbols, for having a better hymn and for having the best mysticism. And all this would not have been possible without the inspiration of Genghis Khan.

When you are a teenager, you are constantly beset by multiple ideas and concerns, so it becomes difficult to sleep well. In my young times, on television gave late night movies, which were generally movie classics with historical motivations. One of those nights, which I now remember as founding, I saw the movie "Genghis Khan" (1965) where Omar Sharif was performing. Decades later I saw her again and considered her naive, which caused me some disappointment and self-pity, which is absurd and funny at the same time. However, what surprised me the most that time was that, according to the film, Temüjin with a handful of men was forging a tribe and then an empire, which until today is known as the greatest of all time: the Mongol Empire. Excellent motivation for my patrol mates! I told myself. And so a project was born for my group of friends and me: "The Mongoose Empire". I think I have explained to them the relationship between the concept of empire and Genghis Khan, but I think they did not understand it well or, surely, I could not explain. For my part, I wanted to go deeper, and that's how I got to Harold Lamb's book, which I discovered in the great library of my school.

From that time until now I became a regular at historical novels, especially those of Harold Lamb. The adventures that I had with my scout patrol were of great encouragement to tell you in this brief essay, but its genesis exemplifies what can be generated with the motivation implied by history and its great men. As Thomas Carlyle said: universal history, the story of what man has accomplished in this world, is at heart the story of the great men who have worked here. There is a whole discussion about whether history is only contingent, that if events are inevitable and that history is therefore deterministic; where great men are casual and have only taken advantage of the historical situation to highlight and live their time. When I reflect on this, I am tempted to think that nothing is better than sinking into an armchair and crossing my arms. Nothing more alien to the projections and dreams I had there in my teens with my group of friends.

If we listened to Heraclitus, and we consider that everything is movement, even if we were sunk in an armchair with our arms crossed, we would be moving. It is not possible to run away from the maelstrom of temporality (and entropy, the direction of time). However, it is different to be moved like a cork floating in the ocean or to move according to the will of one's own will. What makes men deserving of important different biographies with respect to those who do not? Is it precisely this ability to project beyond themselves and generate a tension between what they are ceasing to be (individuals sunk in an armchair) and the ghost (the ideal) of what they want to become? Nietzsche said that man is a tense rope between the animal and the superman. That is, an unfinished being and in tearing movement. Hence our natural schizophrenia and belief, very widespread, in the division between body and soul. That tension stems from our ability to "unfold" and observe ourselves in the universe. I have already mentioned it dimly before: it is not possible to observe, categorize and identify rules and principles of the universe but it is through observing ourselves, as we inhabit and are the universe. However, epistemologically speaking, we divide the universe into two: subject and object, as if this were, even if abstractly, possible.

Returning to patrol games as opposed to life sunk in an armchair, was each of the small acts of mysticism, as we called it, subject to historical determinism, or perhaps not, and only averages count when it comes to narrating the historical process as a whole? The latter is as if each of our movements, blood flow, breathing, nerve impulses of the brain, etc. were cancelled when I sink in the chair waiting for the development of the story to take place on its own. Would it be possible to ignore each of these movements to just describe and pay attention to the historical average that means sinking in the chair? The metaphor is very bright. Then it is worth asking: Are all these small physiological acts dominated by mechanics, a will or chance? It is not simple to venture through any of them, however we can choose the one we like the most. Why? Simply, because "we want." This is a great paradox, because whatever the answer is, it is finally an act of will. Well, there is no way to escape the whim of nature, and to get us out of ourselves!

Another metaphor about chance and will: throw a dice. Betting on the winning face has a probability of 1 to 6. Accepting the game implies that, taking the risk and playing. However, the dice will not show any of its faces without the intervention of the hand that rotates it. There is no chance in itself without will. Chance and probability are abstract, almost metaphysical constructions. Someone can say that there they are without being. Well, as the Tao says "Being and non-being grow together." I would add that they inhabit the uncertainty principle. Meditating on the latter, I looked at one of the kitchen ceramics and saw (or I thought that I saw) an ant walking on it. The funny thing was that for me, and given the distance I was at, I couldn't distinguish the exact position of the ant inside the pottery. On one occasion I saw her near a certain vertex and in the next instant I visualized her on the opposite edge. So and so, at times it appeared in the centre of the pottery and in another diffused way I saw it walking along the shore, as if it were a path of ants or several of them. This reminded me of the matter about the position of the electron in the atom that cannot be defined by the uncertainty principle except from the loss of information relative to its momentum. The position of the electron is limited to a sector of space-time where there is the greatest probability that the electron is found: a cloud of probability, a dice with many faces. The position of the electron can only be elucidated if an observer, a man with will, defines it by his act of observation. That is how I defined the position of the ant and with that I began the game of the dice and the observation of the world of ceramics.

When throwing the dice we tear the reality showing the nakedness of chance and determining the present (or perhaps just a recent past, already dead). At least we believe that. That is why the role of the will, of that energy that pushes us to go beyond, throw the dice, leave the chair and visualize the ant in the pottery. What allows the universe to be torn is precisely the area of ​​creative freedom that implies the uncertainty principle. That space that remains between who we are, or we are ceasing to be, that is, men reflecting in an armchair, and that ideal that we build by observing us and observing the universe through ourselves, a kind of construction of ideal, the tense rope that mentioned Nietzsche's Zarathustra. That open wound that involves dreaming and projecting beyond oneself that is nothing other than living. Well, to affirm life is just to rebel against entropy and the change of the environment. A resistance temper tantrum, a type of affirmation of life, the natural engine of our projections and that makes a life not end or start in an armchair. In short, humanity is an open wound. Wound that is prolonged due to self-observation. It is as if we were a dog or a snake that, when wanting to bite its tail, dislocates its neck and throat. And let us continue so wounded and dying. Well, this is finally our last certainty, the one we sneak away or pretend to make fun of: death itself and that of all the components of the universe. And despite this, the grace of our dance is to perpetuate our dying pirouettes as much as possible and create new realities in this effort.

How to fill that imaginary wound, that space as white paper, which some have called conscience? Wanting to find answers to these questions is that we venture to tell the story of our lives. This saves us, for years, from the grip of death or the sucking of an armchair. Unfolding a second time and watching yourself spinning these narratives can be scary. How many derivatives does the human spirit support? Beyond ourselves and our narratives is there a new sacred space? I am very envious to remember those teenagers years, engaged in an almost mythological fantasy. Where to set up a camp in Melipilla means raising Mongolian yurts in the Gobi desert. Where our totem pole, a rabbit horn lined in rabbit leather, with the imposing flag of our patrol and a steel tip the size of a palm extended at its lower end, lay erect at night, buried in the rugged banks of the River Clarillo in Pirque, to which we lit candles, by way of a pagan ritual. Lighting our fires, singing our hymns, playing and believing us winners, even though we always lost the games. And I as leader, Khan of the empire, and at the same time as narrator. Mythologically decorating reality and making dramas in things that were simple. Reality seemed different, but thoughts are things, projections are things, elements that boil in our nervous systems connected like ants on a pottery that multiply under our gaze. We are present in that created reality. There are times when a narrative voice is powerful and enthusiastic. As men we are a river that carries many symbols, words and culture. It is not always easy to contain this river. It is the waterfall that is born from the same wound that I mentioned before: The tense rope or the tearing uncertainty principle. This principle is a Pandora's Box. Invited to open time after time. Full of mysteries and new things. The future that is armed far from who observes how the universe is born. It is not possible to twist the neck to see behind our backs. Some have tried to become salt columns. Nor can we avoid participating in this wound. We have been invited without being consulted. And by the way we build ourselves, we forge the universe that we are, together with the rest. That is why our eagerness and that is why we constantly project ourselves, because we want to live and feel that we are alive. And living implies forging realities through narration. To live is to inhabit that tense wound that is permeable to our contribution. We write on the bare back of hope, for she hides at the bottom of the box of uncertainty.