What will you do after the orgy?

Having moved beyond modernity and postmodernity, the death of God and savior ideologies, we have arrived at nowhere. So what now? Cool memoriesJean Baudrillard recounts that "at the height of an orgy, a man whispered in a woman's ear: 'What are you going to do after the orgy?'" The philosopher Gregorio Luri uses this anecdote to illustrate our bewilderment: "When, finally, having transcended inherited limits, it seemed we should feel free, we find ourselves asking what to do after the orgy." And he concludes: "We love freedom, but we seek the shelter of fidelity; we defend critical thinking, but we struggle to submit to criticism of ourselves..."

Luri always unsettles and seduces. Her mind and erudition are always buzzing. So is her heart. She writes and thinks as naturally as breathing. "Thinking is making a path." Luri has walked a long way. It's her everyday life, which she now presents to us in an essay whose title is a powerful statement: The dignity of the mediocre (Encuentro Editions). Always swimming against the tide, in times of the apotheosis of talent and meritocracy, of that secular religion that enthrones brilliant individuals—disruptive, innovative, creative, authentic—on the altars of fame, it brings us down to earth with the reality of our ambiguity: "We are neither always as we would like to be, nor would we like to be, nor would we like to be."

We are mediocrityOf average quality. We are half-finished, which means we have the potential to become who we are. We can swing towards degradation or overcoming. We set limits for ourselves. We have habits. We are pleased to recognize the security of things known, understood. We also enjoy adventure, of course. Discovering, creating, transgressing. But often to return to or arrive at the simple essence: a friendship, an apple, a job... "Limits are fragile, but they humanize."

Love is a limit that comes from ancient times. "In ancient Greece the verb evergetéô "It meant doing good to the community out of philanthropy, voluntarily," recalls Luri, who champions the dualistic Plato, a Plato who was anything but dogmatic, the thinker who coined "the principle evergeta"In its friction with the irrational dynamism of matter and form, this principle—doing good—shapes us. We are children of that and of two thousand years of Christianity. But, with the fall of enlightened historical optimism and its utopian daughters, we have long since been riding without kingdoms on the horse of the child's horse. Heidegger (it rhymes better in Spanish):"The nothing stunned"How to get out? "If it's so difficult to be a nihilist, it's because it's even harder to renounce the principle." evergeta".

Luri once again prescribes Plato, who invites us to continue dreaming while being aware of our limitations, and also Socrates, who urges us to seek the truth—always limited—and, furthermore, not to forget the legend of the Temple of Delphi, foundational to Europe: "Know thyself," that is, you know yourself. We accept, then, our mediocrity, our "essential heterogeneity" (Juan de Mairena) as a starting point. To live, then, is to accept one's own limitations and to differentiate oneself from oneself. Because, as Hegel says and Luri notes, "the limit includes within itself the possibility of its own overcoming."

The devout Chesterton told the pragmatist John Dewey: "Pragmatism is a matter of human needs, and one of the main human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist." Luri sees it this way: we need both science and love; we need to capture facts with metaphors. We need limits so we can break them. We need abstractions that give meaning to our practical sense: solidarity, tolerance, freedom, a sense of community. One observation: "We change the limits of things, but not the need to define boundaries." To philosophize is to define the mystery of life.

So, after the orgy, what then? Finally, once again, Plato, who believes that measure, limit, order, and reason are always better than excess, the unlimited, disorder, and unreason. Plato, who sees the best of the soul in the serene response to misfortune. And Luri, who warns us about the egocentric gravitation of those who are always navel-gazing and invites us to be "worthy of our very singular and exceptional mediocrity." Happy New Year 2026, dear mediocre readers, and may the beginning evergeta join us.