No more energy for war, all energy for peace

No more energy for war, all energy for peace

Oral tradition tells that when Columbus arrived in Aztec territory, the territory of the children of the sun, he was trapped in the greed for the gold and to appropriate it he appealed to a deception, because as Europe had already unveiled the mystery of the trajectory of the celestial bodies, he knew that soon a total eclipse of the sun would happen; he then told them that if they did not deliver the gold he would take the sun away from them. In the midst of the event, frightened, the natives delivered what was demanded of them?

The western custom of abusing communities whose cosmogony and culture is based on different cognitive baggage is ancient. Another reading, not exempt of biting, would be to say that the native peoples knew well where the source of life was, while the newcomers knew what to do with the metal, by that time implanted in the European culture as a foundation of social status and a mirage of happiness.

It is true, the sun is the engine of life. Its light energy, through photosynthesis, is transformed into chemical energy that spreads into infinite forms of organisms; the expression biodiversity is the most fitting description of this vital explosion. However, it is worth saying that, of the energy emitted by the sun, only an average of 2 calories-gram/cm2/minute reach the upper atmosphere and of this, a little more than 50% is dissipated in its passage through the atmosphere. One last piece of information so as not to bore: an oak leaf in full photosynthetic activity takes one hundred units of energy; of which, during the aforementioned process, ninety-eight are dispersed in the form of heat and only two units are transformed into sugar or concentrated energy that enters to sustain the matter through which life flows.

Nature is a prodigy achieved with an excellent energetic economy. There evolved one of many species, the so-called Homo sapiens, which coined its body structure to the dynamics of the planet and its mental structure to work, to make physical space a comfortable place.

At the dawn of humanity, matrilineality was the pillar of the incipient social groupings; it also placed the woman at the center of the administration of common resources and collective activities, being inherent to her condition of life-giving mother. Gradually, patriarchy crept in, blurring values such as respect for the common good and the inclusion of empathy in the formation of offspring. Most regrettably, women ended up subjugated by men and their work undervalued, turned into an obligation or a destiny.

Taking a leap in the timeline, we now see ourselves without common goods and without collective conscience; from such a breeding ground emerge individuals or small groups who place themselves in a position of command and attribute privileges to themselves; clinging to their status, they set and remove norms that benefit them even when their “obedient”, not to say subjects, disagree, suffer or act deceived. Women have done their thing fluctuating between desperation and silence, but without losing the primordial quality of caring for the offspring; a lot of energy invested in it.

In turn, each descendant in his vital struggle to learn to walk, to read, to write, to fall in and out of love, to achieve a dignified job in accordance with his own attributes, to learn to understand his fellow men and the environment that surrounds him, in short, to learn to live, invests a lot of energy in the vital adventure of wandering the planet Earth.

One can add the energies, that minimal one that coming from the sun opens in the multicolored fan of biodiversity, that other one that comes from the abnegation of invisible women-mothers and one more coming from the struggle of each person to touch their dreams; such energies, such efforts, are erased at a stroke when a whim, generally thought in dollars and varnished as a search for democracy or benefit for humanity, in demagogic speeches trap the unwary, herd sheep, silence spokespersons and make it obligatory to expose one’s life for other people’s struggles. How much energy invested in a son to see him, dressed in camouflage, leave in a truck for war?

In a soft hollow of land once enjoyed by the Afro communities in La Guajira, now taken over by El Cerrejón, one of its inhabitants told that in the past, when two people were in a conflict apparently impossible to solve, a community pot was organized in that place; boys and girls played, those who were in their teens enjoyed or suffered it, women and men talked, while those in the fist fights came and went, insulting words, torn shirts and blood showing broken skin…. After a while the protagonists of the brawl, their testosterone spent because, needless to say, they were almost always men, glimpsed the uselessness of the fight and the ridiculousness of the situation, the fists stopped… calm returned; “This was our place and our way of settling conflicts” expressed the gentleman.

 

With the candid logic of those who observe the taste for the quiet life of most of humanity, it is not difficult to propose that people or groups bent on defending their own interests, labeling them as “in search of democracy” or “in favor of humanity”, copy the custom described in the previous paragraph; that they fight until they are idiots but do not put others to lose their lives or the quality of their existence in fights that are alien to them. Neither nature, nor women, nor society wish to invest energy and efforts to be liquidated in iniquitous and foreign quarrels. Do not stand up sons and daughters for war!

The search for justice cannot be postponed, without it there is no peace, but neither war nor polarization are the way; they produce confusion and bewilderment, situations that, added to the blurred value of the common good, lead humanity to “every man for himself”; hence lying, taking advantage, cheating, are the prelude to the other pandemic that overwhelms the human community: corruption. This pandemic, corruption, merits another reflection.

Lía Isabel Alvear
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