by\u00a0Ana Bazac<\/p>\n
\n
If I would dedicate this note to the upcoming Christmas, it would be simple bumkum: \u201cholidays are always the occasion to show our compassion<\/em> for the unfortunate, our goodwill<\/em>, our charity<\/em>, au fond our love<\/em> for humans, are they?\u201d And tear-exciting palaver about poor children and mothers finding their happiness (goods necessary for the everyday life, or the pay of healthcare and school, or even a little house lightened by both the candles of the Christmas tree and the until now inexistent TV set) with the help of benevolent sponsors would follow.\u00a0<\/p>\n Actually, the euphoric donations in order that everyone to have holidays seem to be breaks<\/em> in the ordinary course of things to take more and more, and to do anything<\/em> to earn \u2018one\u2019s living\u2019. This course excludes from the ordinary habits<\/em> that to have mercy towards those suffering the injustices<\/em> \u2018society\u2019 imposes. And I do not refer at all to the habit to give something to the beggars: a kind of mercy resembling somehow to the pattern of \u201choliday benevolence<\/em>\u201d that outs of one\u2019s pocket pennies in the idea to not arrive in the situation to need these pennies; or, by giving to the beggars \u2018the donor\u2019 finally recognises the appurtenance of both to the same species; or, his \u2018generosity\u2019 is a preventive movement of a possible overthrowing of his position in this relation: it\u2019s better to give broken money when they are panhandled, instead of begging, is it not?<\/p>\n But the structure of social relations framing us \u2013 the domination-submission relations \u2013 made us and formatted our mind in such a way as to think that they are normal\/human, and the only normal, and that the human duty of everyone is to strive for his\/her existence\/the existence of his\/her family, and to consider that the Others, especially the far away from us, would be only accidental and non-important elements within the environment surrounding us. The world shaped by the domination-submission relations always in evolution and having the form of \u201cthe West\u201d[1]<\/a> has induced in our habits the absolute priority of our duty towards us \/our family and, since this individualistic way of thinking was presumed by us as the only normal one and pertaining to every other normal human being, the symbol of this absolute priority in the relationships of the individuals with God.<\/p>\n \n Our egotism is so huge that we have privatised God<\/em>, and think that if we owe only to God our full human commitment, so to adore Him, and not the human beings and the humanity from every human being \u2013 so the absolute submission to Him would substitute our availability to commiseration <\/em>towards Others (since we share the same miserable human vulnerability) \u2013 God as such would serve us, and not the Others. \u201cHelp me<\/em>, God\u201d: me<\/em>, me<\/em>, me<\/em>. We do not think that Others ask in the same manner the God they imagine; and yes, we are taught to consider God as omnipotent and His help to some ones as not decreasing the infinite amount of potency and help towards the whole humankind, but at the same time we put His poor magnificence in a very embarrassing situation: we ask God to assure our<\/em> victory in the war waged against Others who pray God to win against us. And this is not only literature: Jaroslav Hasek wrote in his unforgettable Svejk<\/em> in the WWI<\/em> about this foolish practice, but the same happened in the WWII, and in the \u2018post-modern\u2019 wars of the Empire against all who wanted to exercise the human autonomy; and do we not have a whole hierarchy of priests in our armies and prisons? And do we not ask the blessings of priests, when we start a business that inherently competes with other ones?<\/p>\n \n \n Irrespective of our faith and our Sunday\/\u201choliday benevolence\u201d, or just on this basis, we lost the capacity to being merciful<\/em>. Rather, we search \u2013 and find, of course, since the power relations are the most interested to legitimise domination-submission with different ideas of inferiority of those whom they subjugate \u2013 reasons for our cruelty. Pay attention: it is not only about a visible physical cruelty<\/em>: most of us do not have weapons and do not whip our subordinates, do we not?; but also about a visible spiritual cruelty<\/em> \u2013 the words and ideas we use in order to put the Others in \u2018their deserved\u2019 lower place and to force them not to escape from it; and also about a passive<\/em> form of cruelty \u2013 the above ones were active<\/em> \u2013 consisting of not acting against cruelty, and not being merciful.<\/p>\n \n Why did we lose our capacity to being merciful? Because to being full of pity<\/em> towards the Others \u2013 and, once more, towards not only \u2018our neighbour\u2019\/fellow from our community, but also towards all those far away from us[2]<\/a> \u2013 means, nowadays when we have learned from the whole human history, not to give them what abound us, but to search for the causes<\/em> of their socially induced suffering, and to act<\/em> against these causes.<\/p>\n \n To have mercy means to be indignant<\/em>. Indignation means courage<\/em> to solve things in an efficient<\/em> way: this is the reason the problem of beggars is not solved by giving them our oblation\/the tiny symbolic act of donation and remembrance \u2013 and yes, again, the Islam with the compulsory rule of annual donation to the poor (2,5% of the wealth of the individual) as well as the rule of voluntary donation, all in the name of God, and not of the philanthropists, and all of these without hurting the feelings of the beneficiaries, is superior to the religions which only exhort people to give and the donation would be done on behalf of the philanthropist, the source of wealth being this one; but, obviously, Islam is only a religion (not shaking the social order) and even the Islamic charity has in view only the narrow community, i.e. it has a historical conditioning and limitation \u00a0\u2013 but by instituting<\/em> such a social arrangement as to avoid<\/em>\u00a0 the social polarisation and the decay of some ones to the undesirable state of \u2018assisted\u2019 helpless and hopeless.<\/p>\n \n If indignation means courage<\/em> \u2013 we all do remember the place of courage between the ancient Greek cardinal virtues \u2013 it means also not only \u2018to forbid<\/em> giving to the beggars\u2019 but, chiefly, to act in order (not only to free the slaves, as in Islam, but) to undo the structural causes <\/em>of situations in front of which common people feel mercy but do not know how to get out from both the tragedies generating their mercy and their impotence to act against the causes.<\/p>\n \n Thus, mercy is not a feeling of the week, begging for help, neither of the pharisaic well-to-do who think that by donating they shoot (not two, but) three birds with one stone: they calm their conscience, appear as worthy philanthropists, and help the structural domination-submission relations to last. Being indignation, mercy is not a passive feeling, but quite revolutionary<\/em>. And today, we can understand and exercise this shift of the traditional modern and far from being a heroic sentiment of mercy: just this traditional sentiment was rejected by Nietsche.<\/p>\n \n So, mercy is not a patching of the present capitalism, as the promoters of the power relations insist to use it as a medicine of the systemic crisis \u2013 including\/especially in the present phase of possible turning to a new old rule of the isolationist and protectionist \u2018national\u2019 capitalism that, yet, would be very doubtful to counter\/stop the internal logic of capital as such: a hypothetical future welfare state<\/em> interventionism is, on the contrary, stopped by the inherent logic of transnationalisation of capital \u2013. Mercy, as indignation<\/em> and not only recognition<\/em> of the Others, but also as deep feeling of mutual substitutions<\/em> of different humans and situations, underlies the present possible social conscience of more and more people: that the power\/domination-submission relations are not intangible and eternal, but historical, and that the common people\u2019s determination to act \u201cin the line\u201d of the understanding of this logic of society\/history is essential for the realisation of this logic. Did Hegel not demonstrate that this logic is inevitable, inherent to the historical laws and existent through the development of the (human) spirit? \u00a0And thus, that this logic does not annul the free will of the humans?<\/p>\n \n The holidays seem to be breaks: the noisy and coloured clich\u00e9s of the American style advertising of a happy Christmas with tree and more and more wares bought in a febrile manner \u2018because otherwise it would not be real holidays\u2019 tend to suggest that society would be, when all is said and done, united\/or at least the community of happy buyers is united, is it?, and that a general mercy and benevolence would reign. The \u201csupply and demand holidays\u201d are the illustration of an ideal society, a tranquilizer, or even sedative, of the common people: \u2018there are so many donations\u2019 that it would not be a place for mercy. In fact, the holidays are moments of preparation of the future \u2018normal\u2019 state of homo homini lupus<\/em> without any mercy. The holidays are exceptions in the more and more Orwellian \u201cstate of exception\u201d (Agamben) of neo-liberal politics: but as the ancient Saturnalia, neither the holidays do last forever.<\/p>\n \n But if so, if mercy was confiscated by the powerful and diverted from its genuine meaning of human solidarity<\/em> \u2013 the feeling of mutual substitutions of situations and states lies at the basis of the human solidarity \u2013 by them, it results that the common people must take back this sentiment by giving it the contents<\/em> of action against the causes of the necessity of social mercy.<\/p>\n \n Words? No, unfortunately. The biggest richness of man is time, his life span. And this life span is according to the contents<\/em> of life. But both the span and the contents were<\/em> and are<\/em> systematically wasted by the powerful beneficiaries of the power relations. And the tense of above verbs shows that there is about the present, and not only about the past. To give only an example: the fact that some people were detained unlawfully in prison without never being charged with a crime<\/em>[3]<\/a>. Can we remain silent in front of such a tragic, and present, miscarriage of justice: the irreversible losing of time \u2013 in fact, of the life span \u2013 of the individuals? And if we begin to speak, can we not understand that our mercy \u2013 towards the victims, but also towards all the human beings \u2013 is constituted not only of constructive attitudes towards the victims (and mercy means only constructive attitudes), but at the same time of constructive attitudes punishing the ruthless powerful arbitrarily bereaving humans of their time: because punishment is \u201ca prerequisite to democracy with its meaning lying in the protection of social values\u201d\/of freedom and equality in front of the law and without which there are no rational justifications<\/em> for the human conducts[4]<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thus, mercy means also punishment: love <\/em>and determination to correct<\/em>; according to the human rationality<\/em>, the only one allowing the expanse of universal <\/em>means of the human existence and regulation[5]<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n #<\/p>\n notes<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> See Joschka Fischer, Goodbye to the West<\/em>, https:\/\/www.project-syndicate.org\/commentary\/goodbye-to-american-global-leadership-by-joschka-fischer-2016-12<\/a>.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Ana Bazac, \u201eLa souffrance de nos lointains. La r\u00e9verb\u00e9ration philosophique des scandales r\u00e9cents de torture et d\u2019abus li\u00e9s \u00e0 la guerre en Irak\u201d, Anachronia<\/em>, Hamburg, 8, 2007, pp. 180-214.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Zaida Green, \u201cGuant\u00e1namo Diary<\/em> author released after 14 years in illegal detention\u201d, 19 October 2016, http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2016\/10\/19\/guan-o19.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n