A tiring sport
Jordi Pujol
Editorial / June 25, 2008
It is a tiring sport, and what’s more it provides an excuse not to do anything. I refer to the sport that involves speaking for hours and hours, to writing articles and more articles and above all to conducting surveys and more surveys on materialism and post-materialism, on the values of the young and of the not-so-young, or on the current state of civicism, etc.
It is worth noting that I personally have also practised, and still practise, this sport. But for this But for this very reason I can gauge the senselessness that it can lead to, and therefore the urgent need not only not to carry out any more surveys – it is always good to fine-tune the findings –, but also to draw conclusions and, consequently and without excuses, to begin to act.
When it comes to drawing conclusions everyone can draw their own. Logical. This is how it must be. And one conclusion may be to do a further survey. I am certain that I myself will still believe it opportune to do one more. Yet the central effort of Catalan society and its political arena must be to act on a reality that we are already all too familiar with.
And what do we know? What are we familiar with?
We know we have a crisis of strong values. Bauman said that our values are chiefly liquid. An expression that has become fashionable.
What do we understand by liquid values? Are they changing values – or to put it differently – fleeting values that need changing every so often. Values without consistency and without duration. And, as such, that do not demand commitment. Neither personal nor collective. In an interview on 13 December 2005 in La Vanguardia, Bauman complained, “we need solid references, but in our environment everything has become liquid”. We might say that these are removable values.
Since though Bauman has defined and coined the term “liquid values”, he does not assess them as positively as it might at times appear when reading a good deal of literature from our country, which often, the fruit of progressive thinking, offers a biased view of what really is happening and is being said at the highest levels of international political and intellectual thought.
Bauman and his liquid values are one example of this. Another is the image that Lakoff, a fashionable author, presents to us. Held up as the “inventor” of what they now ecstatically call the tale, except that before we would have said discourse (yet it really was and is the same). What was the force of Felipe González if not his discourse, or the tale? Or that of Tony Blair, Mrs Thatcher, Kennedy, Reagan, and probably, Obama.
But – attention –, what did Lakoff really say? What did he say to the Democrats in February 2005, that is, after they lost elections for the second time? He told them: “I insist that we must address in depth your values, but you do rarely do it”. And he attacked them for speaking only of programmes. And Bill Richardson also said when analysing the reason for the defeat that “the Democrats had to broaden their debate on values” and not leave them in the hands of the Republicans.
And this is how he defined the new path, on which the democrats were to embark. Values.
And naturally, not liquid values. SOILD AND WORKING VALUES.
Obama is already the result of this change. He bases his discourse on values. On soild values, not liquid ones.
But we continue to have our heads in the clouds
At this point our heads are still in the clouds with reductionist versions. With values as thin as a cigarette paper. And we continue saying that this is the order of the day. And that this is occurring throughout the entire world. But it is not true.
We have already seen it is not happening in the United States. And it is not happening in the large emerging countries: China, India, in fact all Asia, in Australia, to an extent in the Arab countries. Namely, in those countries that have drive. They have convictions and commitment.
And certainly much the same can be said for Europe. But we all know that Europe is a continent threatened with decline, which must urgently react. And some countries are doing so. But not us in Catalonia.
And we ask ourselves: Does it continue to have a sense of commitment? Does it continue to have a sense of the assumption of responsibility? Does it continue to have a sense of fidelity? What Kennedy called the “acceptance of the position of responsibility”? Does it continue to imply a sense of patriotism? Do we need to return to Kennedy in order not to smile? To return to “Americans... ask yourselves what you can do for your country”
Does anyone believe that the many people who for forty years remained loyal to democracy, to the ideal of a just country, to Catalonia, would have remained steadfast on liquid values? By way of an example, albeit a home-grown one, in his memoirs, Josep Benet recounts seeing on the morning of 27 January 1939 in Francoist troops marching down Carrer Gran de Sant Andreu on their way to Badalona, Mataró, Granollers, on their way to the definitive defeat of democracy and of Catalonia. In that precise moment he made a COMMITMENT: “I will give over my life to the fight this. And to the restoration of democracy, for a just society and for the freedom of Catalonia”. And this is what he did.
And like him, so did many others.
There is nothing liquid in this. Therefore, was Benet’s pledge ridiculous?
Perhaps this is a somewhat extreme example – not everyone can make commitments of this scope – and clearly today’s situation is not what it was then. But it is also challenging and disquieting and the risks are there, because without consistent values and without a keen sense of commitment we will not achieve it.
I return to the beginning. We continue conducting all the surveys we need. But they do not provide an excuse not to react. They merely serve as a cover under which we can walk away and continue in a sweet lethargy. We mean that it continues to be the time of the sociologists, but most urgently, it is also the time of the schoolteachers, of the parents, of the intellectuals, of the poets, of the mass media, of everyone who has the power of aptitude and is able react against inaction and lack inconsistency.
Naturally, it is likewise the time of the politicians.
When it comes to drawing conclusions everyone can draw their own. Logical. This is how it must be. And one conclusion may be to do a further survey. I am certain that I myself will still believe it opportune to do one more. Yet the central effort of Catalan society and its political arena must be to act on a reality that we are already all too familiar with.
And what do we know? What are we familiar with?
We know we have a crisis of strong values. Bauman said that our values are chiefly liquid. An expression that has become fashionable.
What do we understand by liquid values? Are they changing values – or to put it differently – fleeting values that need changing every so often. Values without consistency and without duration. And, as such, that do not demand commitment. Neither personal nor collective. In an interview on 13 December 2005 in La Vanguardia, Bauman complained, “we need solid references, but in our environment everything has become liquid”. We might say that these are removable values.
Since though Bauman has defined and coined the term “liquid values”, he does not assess them as positively as it might at times appear when reading a good deal of literature from our country, which often, the fruit of progressive thinking, offers a biased view of what really is happening and is being said at the highest levels of international political and intellectual thought.
Bauman and his liquid values are one example of this. Another is the image that Lakoff, a fashionable author, presents to us. Held up as the “inventor” of what they now ecstatically call the tale, except that before we would have said discourse (yet it really was and is the same). What was the force of Felipe González if not his discourse, or the tale? Or that of Tony Blair, Mrs Thatcher, Kennedy, Reagan, and probably, Obama.
But – attention –, what did Lakoff really say? What did he say to the Democrats in February 2005, that is, after they lost elections for the second time? He told them: “I insist that we must address in depth your values, but you do rarely do it”. And he attacked them for speaking only of programmes. And Bill Richardson also said when analysing the reason for the defeat that “the Democrats had to broaden their debate on values” and not leave them in the hands of the Republicans.
And this is how he defined the new path, on which the democrats were to embark. Values.
And naturally, not liquid values. SOILD AND WORKING VALUES.
Obama is already the result of this change. He bases his discourse on values. On soild values, not liquid ones.
But we continue to have our heads in the clouds
At this point our heads are still in the clouds with reductionist versions. With values as thin as a cigarette paper. And we continue saying that this is the order of the day. And that this is occurring throughout the entire world. But it is not true.
We have already seen it is not happening in the United States. And it is not happening in the large emerging countries: China, India, in fact all Asia, in Australia, to an extent in the Arab countries. Namely, in those countries that have drive. They have convictions and commitment.
And certainly much the same can be said for Europe. But we all know that Europe is a continent threatened with decline, which must urgently react. And some countries are doing so. But not us in Catalonia.
And we ask ourselves: Does it continue to have a sense of commitment? Does it continue to have a sense of the assumption of responsibility? Does it continue to have a sense of fidelity? What Kennedy called the “acceptance of the position of responsibility”? Does it continue to imply a sense of patriotism? Do we need to return to Kennedy in order not to smile? To return to “Americans... ask yourselves what you can do for your country”
Does anyone believe that the many people who for forty years remained loyal to democracy, to the ideal of a just country, to Catalonia, would have remained steadfast on liquid values? By way of an example, albeit a home-grown one, in his memoirs, Josep Benet recounts seeing on the morning of 27 January 1939 in Francoist troops marching down Carrer Gran de Sant Andreu on their way to Badalona, Mataró, Granollers, on their way to the definitive defeat of democracy and of Catalonia. In that precise moment he made a COMMITMENT: “I will give over my life to the fight this. And to the restoration of democracy, for a just society and for the freedom of Catalonia”. And this is what he did.
And like him, so did many others.
There is nothing liquid in this. Therefore, was Benet’s pledge ridiculous?
Perhaps this is a somewhat extreme example – not everyone can make commitments of this scope – and clearly today’s situation is not what it was then. But it is also challenging and disquieting and the risks are there, because without consistent values and without a keen sense of commitment we will not achieve it.
--------------------------
I return to the beginning. We continue conducting all the surveys we need. But they do not provide an excuse not to react. They merely serve as a cover under which we can walk away and continue in a sweet lethargy. We mean that it continues to be the time of the sociologists, but most urgently, it is also the time of the schoolteachers, of the parents, of the intellectuals, of the poets, of the mass media, of everyone who has the power of aptitude and is able react against inaction and lack inconsistency.
Naturally, it is likewise the time of the politicians.
