...and if we are told that we are "Romantics," that we are "inveterate idealists," that we are "thinking about impossibilities" ...we must (and will) answer a thousand times that we can! Yes! We can! We know that people can continue advancing, doing away with human pettiness.
They say that we live in an inevitably speedy world where we are driven by the force of ever-globalizing capitalism. We say, "Why hurry? Have a drink and let's talk!" They say they are too busy to stop and think. We say, "No wonder the world has never really changed into a better place!" They say that those who fail to go with the flow of trends are lunatics. We say, "We are happier as thoughtful lunatics than anxious trend-setters and trend-buyers." We are tired of seeing our fellow humans on the rich streets of our northern-hemisphere neiborhoods running around everyday like fancy but headless chickens. We are fed up with television commercials that incessantly direct us as to what to buy. We have no more ear for self-centered losers who complain about the evils of bureaucracies without ever quitting to participate in the very process of their reproduction. We no longer trust labor unions that want to make their members fatter and their lives more convenient in the name of fighting against exploitation. We are skeptical of ethnocentric internationalists who cannot put themselves in the cultural shoes of those who are struggling in many countries of the southern hemisphere.
We the creators of this homepage intend to use this space-time as one of many existing junctions in the internationalist network. Our theme is, nevertheless, more anthropological. We intend to use this space-time to carefully list and examine the wisdoms of humanity in the light of existing cultural and more specifically indigenous problems of exploitation and alienation. We intend to reflect upon our own upbringing through these wisdoms, and get us thinking about what each of us can do as a person -- one human being -- about the existing problems in other cultures. Our focus is on ideas, and how to reflect upon existing ideologies. Ideas, as Sub-Commandante Marcos of E.Z.L.N. would put it, cannot compare with realities. True! Yet, what are we to do when we are situated afar from particular realities of a specific indigenous community? Those who have never experienced, or will never have a chance to experience, these realities will never be able to understand and sympathize with them? How is revolution ever possible without sympathy or compassion? We, who are afar, believe that ideas are significant in building a sense of surrogacy as directed toward those others that we care about, their communities and their cultures. Through the development of ideas, we want to learn and understand the realities and internalize them in ourselves as much as we can. We believe that surrogacy as acquired through reflexive ideas and visions would function as the basis for revolutionary interaction and solidarity -- indeed, this is all too obvious to state here!
It may be much easier for the poor to adopt the way of the rich, if given a chance to do so, than the other way around. A rich surrogate may have no right to stand up and speak up for the poor. Yet, there is nothing wrong for the rich to reflect upon her/his own upbringing, and evaluate her/his own society critically, in the light of the poor other. This much we in the northern hemisphere are allowed to do, and should keep on doing. This is the stance that we the creators of this homepage would like to take under the title -- our banner -- called "The Critique of Late-Capitalism."
Come let us scatter flowers
And pour wine into the goblet
Let us rend the roof of heaven
And create a new design
Should anguish prepare an army
To make the blood of lovers flow
The Wine-bearer and I, playing together
Will upturn his foundation
[Hafez Shirazi, Iranian poet (14th c.)]
Jose Gerardo Ayala, Federacion Zapatistas del Norte