Linear time versus cyclic time

The loss of Mexican historical memory

For the pre-Hispanic world, time was circular, each determining time, the sheaf of years that corresponded 52 years, a term that represented the end of the cycle, and the consummation or extinction of the "old fire" to give way to the "new fire", the humans had to destroy all the belongings, houses, etc., which represented the old to give way to the new cycle of time. They had a vision of possession and detached property, so undoing, burning them, represented no suffering, no pain. In contrast, the appropriation (the conquest) installed a linear, cumulative vision of time, with an origin in the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which places us with an open, mysterious, even dangerous time, it is known where it comes from, but It is not known, where it goes, so the attachment to the built, possessed, loved, is painful. and has created a selfish behavior, because we are those who have accumulated and built, we can say that Western man his spirituality is "the external", the accumulated, the possessed, there is no more.

The contrast between pre-Hispanic, cyclic, circular time, particularly from the world of the Aztecs, and the western one, inherited or imposed by colonization, leaves us with certain readings from which to interpret the present behavior of the man of the new world, even of man in general .

That linear time is part of the theory of denomination, based on the construction of a fearful consciousness in the face of the enigma of time, placing and forcing us, before the historical act of accumulation, an attachment to the material determinant for the few gains of pleasure and of happiness that human beings have, this vision of infinite time always leaves us in a paranoid interrogation about the future, which can be suddenly closed without us having time to realize the deception, the futility of our being that is understood only not being, being in death; so that the present exists in the measure of the possessed, the accumulation of things, the future will always be a cursed interrogation, and I would say fatalist, the past has only one origin, and it has been imposed on us is Judeo-Christian theological, therefore, neither does it exist, the present is unsuccessful attempts to have the accumulation of things fill our structural fault, and therefore places us in an epistemological, ontological orphanage, always surrounded by the clinic.

The endless time line, and therefore, mysterious and dangerous, that is building a memory of martyrdom and an obsessive behavior of accumulation of material goods to give meaning to our lives, in contrast, the finite cyclical time, and therefore , predictable, harmonious and confident, that allows us the awareness of finitude and mortality, currently lost by the feeling of unconscious continuity of the human, the unfulfilled promise of an infinite time that undoes us and is only a promise, so without that material spirituality, places the world of the ancients in a more intelligent and liberating aspect. Slavery and appropriation are on the side of infinite, linear time.

After the appropriation, the brainwashing, the demystification of the old world, by the new world, became of the new world old and sick, suffering and zombie, and that was given to change our vision of time, for a mysterious time , which makes us think that the unknown is death, as unwanted, as feared, the world we inherited became contradictory, and a hybrid that contravenes the condition of the historical memory of Western time thinking conducive to making promises, we see that this Mexican hybrid has no historical memory, it does not have a reference from the past that reinforces the present vision to try to make it better and liberating. Only then can we explain that in such a short time the Mexicans, mainly, will stop looking back to realize that all that public crisis that their peoples and institutions are experiencing has an origin, and not in the present; Only in this way can we understand the lightness of opinion about the titanic effort before it, the well-intentioned President Obrador, of rescuing the functionality of the Mexican state, and provoking the consciousness of community lost for more than 100 years of a culture of simulation and the deception.

It seems that nothing happened, that the one in front of us must pay for “the broken plates”, and this is not so, there was an origin of that “riot” that we Mexicans live, which made the policy only serve to fight for the power, not to make public life viable, an electoral policy, and a media political class and made to campaign permanently, now we see it, they do not realize that we are not campaigning, but it seems that way, they do not understand that it is now a time of political community, and social and political awareness, and that we must accept that by passive or active we were all responsible for the deterioration of our public institutions, that politics became an instrument to boost that decadent public power political class, without that political community consciousness it will not be possible to get out of the serious problem of social and public crisis that society and the Mexican state are experiencing.

A look at the origin, a return of itself, of one and the other, a clinic of the social, a return to the conceptions that built our consciousness, an understanding of the Mexican being, it is good to do it, because "the new fire" it could remain in a spark, in a traumatizing conato, and that "the old", "the perverted and faint-hearted fire" be reborn to plunge us back into the gloom and use of force; the civilizing act that implies that “new fire”, its viability is built from the simplest, which is to make home around the fire, to reconstruct the elements that marked the difference between the animal called man and the others, the rescue of the community act, in breaking the selfish and individualistic barriers that have made us fall prey to the slavery of appropriation that still exists by the new colonizers of the global world and the introjection that have made us of the faceless universal man, in placing us from another less fearful vision of time , the cyclic time.

In Mexico the colony was more traumatic because of the resistance of the Aztec empire, our ancestors in the confusion tried to resist the yoke and violence, so the process of evangelization, and I would say now to internalize the cyclical time was more cruel, literally a genocide , we accept things by force, but we filter our own, our spirituality different from the settlers, we disfigure their temples, we can stop believing in God and continue believing in our little mother "the virgin Mary", we accept linear time but from a consciousness of a cyclical time, that is why “we are worth a mother”, even today we resist that new colonization that tries to keep the empire at the top of the sword.

Some have written about the psychology and philosophy of the Mexican, the man who with one word is capable of saying many things, as Octavio Paz describes it well in the polysemy of “la chingada”, the man who with a linear time stops to have historical memory, although dangerous, original, there is the libertarian act, we have rebelled to the design of the consciousness of dominion, of guilt, because only then have they been able to maintain the system of exploitation, charging us to satiety with the guilt of Death of a man, Jesus Christ, and with the small deaths that this historical memory permanently maintains in its univocal narrative of a vision of the good, true and beautiful, but now that historical disgrace is a double-edged sword.

It was good to do historical memory now, even temporarily, but now that a decisive watershed opens to define the destiny of Mexico, and that there are not many options to face the outbursts of those more than 100 years that built a corrupt face and perverse of post-revolutionary Mexico.

First, we must recognize certain truths or conditions necessary for the viability of a transition towards a “permanent and reactive democracy”, self-critical, and these have to do with understanding that for more than 100 years that post-revolutionary model of the perfect presidential dictatorship built Mexico contradictory, poor, worn, dangerous and without pride that we live today; understand that the political class that has governed public power in Mexico made the legal and democratic functionality of the Mexican State disappear through installing a culture of simulation and deception (perfect dictatorship), there was no State! and that now we are seeing the attempt to recover the functionality of the Mexican State, and that this is not enough to solve the serious problems of poverty, marginalization and insecurity that we Mexicans live, which have to do with a historical lag; that we cannot continue to run into the wall: with the false expectations of the global world, with the lack of an identity of the mexicanidad, with a society alien to the responsibilities of the public res, with the irresponsible and greedy local and external oligarchy that is the only one that always goes unscathed from these crises and social changes, with the stalking of the insane heirs of the political praxis of the old political class, and with a still decadent political class, with that cursed inheritance of degeneration that left us that perfect dictatorship which makes us start literally from scratch, without a culture of legality and peace, without a social conscience that will be responsible for the construction of our public spaces, without a system of morally correct parties since they were only educated for the fight for power for power, with an uncritical and passive society; that he cannot repeat the history of the culture of simulation and deception that has so much belittled Mexico, so he has to think that political participation does not end in suffrage, and that the construction of new Mexico is not a professional thing of politics, or of a man, however well intentioned; and that exactly because of that attitude of silence, not to think, it is because of what has happened what has happened; understand the obsolescence of politics and the political class, that is, that politics as we have practiced it in Mexico has not served to make a better world for Mexicans, in that sense we can say that politics does not work !; understand that the only way to transform Mexico peacefully is to re-found the Mexican State; to believe that, for this, a critical society is needed that is able to organize itself to relieve that old caste of politicians who are direct causes of the public crisis and the deterioration of our institutions; understand that to re-found the Mexican State we have to summon a New Constituent; that, if it is not done, we will continue destined to marginalization, hunger and death to thousands of Mexicans even without being born; and that, the time has come to publicize politics and return to community.

These obvious that it seems that common sense can account for it, and that no intellectuals are needed to recognize that they are truths and conditions for the viability of the real Transformation of Mexico, run into the poor historical memory of the Mexican and perhaps, of the citizens of the World, I don't know if those powerful processes of alienation in which the Empire has subjected us, and the new processes of colonization are the causes; or it is a peculiarity caused by the spiritual filtration of the cyclic time of the ancient Mexican in the western line time.

The pathetic and poor scenario of the analysts, intellectuals, and the political show confirms that loss of historical memory, in the opinion strips, in the articles on political news, in the discourse of the poor political opposition, even in innocence or Ignorance of the new powerful, in the gatherings of the rich and poor, the narrative repeats itself poorly, as if nothing had happened, and it is a matter of seeing what the ruler is doing in turn, the statistics, the morning outbursts, the social and security indicators; and to insist that the one in front of us must ask him to be accountable, forgetting with an astonishing lightness that what Mexico is living is the result of a historical deviation, although I harbor my suspicion that the northern neighbor has something to do with this, since It has always been convenient for him to have his backyard with a confused neighbor without ambitions.

Beyond answering those questions of temporality, the truth is that Mexico suffers a dangerous loss of historical memory, not realizing that what we live today is the resistance of that "old fire" of not extinguishing, and continue doing Havoc in the public life of the Mexican. And we must stop it, and recover that historical memory that allows us to build a prosperous, safe and fair Mexico.