1. Limits. “I had a friend who, like me, wasn’t particularly interested in priests and their teachings, but rather in what he called ‘the sacred within me.’ When I asked him what he meant, he told me that the sacred were his limitations as a human being, ‘that there are things I could never do.’” This is how Theodor Kallifatides, first recipient of the Diari ARA International Prize, began his presentation last Saturday at the Cap Roig Encounter.
He hammered home the point: “The world is in crisis, a crisis that could become as great as the one I experienced as a child—a world war.” Faced with this reality, we must accept, more than ever, that not everything is possible. It is necessary to place the question of limits at the forefront, as the foundation of humanist thought: recognition and respect for the human condition. In other words, evil is what creates it. And it is in the face of evil that we must constitute ourselves as humanity. This evil is made up of acts of power and abuse that manifest at all levels, from the private—family, personal relationships—to the public: work, the economy, institutions.
Kallifatides asked his friend for an example of what he could not do: "I would never be able to hit my mother, under any circumstances. The very idea makes me shudder. And I don't have to believe in gods or priests: that limit exists within me as clearly as those arms." He added: "I would never be able to kill a man. It is a sacred limit that I cannot cross. On the other hand, I would defend myself tooth and nail if someone attacked me or my family."
In nihilistic times, Kallifatides appeals to keeping respect for others alive, at a time when powers seem to have made the loss of the notion of limits their way of being in the world. Let's mention Trump, Musk, Putin, and company, but the list of abuses is endless in all spaces and institutions of public and private life. "Not everything is possible" is the principle for defining the limits, as well as the boundaries, of the dignity of the human condition.
2. Dehumanization. “I want to keep my sense of respect alive,” says Kallifatides. A moral imperative that contrasts sharply with the lawless—yet still controlled—space of social media, where there seem to be no limits, everything is permitted, and criteria for truth are conspicuously absent. Those who make their latest idea the most widespread are in charge, those who seek noise, unchecked propagation, the creation of bubbles amidst restlessness and indolence. Is it possible, in this context, to generate shared spaces, “built on respect for life, for people, for nature, for things”? This attitude is what Kallifatides misses in the “consumer society where, despite everything, everything has a price.” And in this context, a touch of melancholy becomes inevitable: “How will future generations find each other if they no longer have anything in common?” In other words, can the accelerating pace of dehumanization be halted? We are living through a radical shift in communication systems. And we only have one certainty: that their capacity to influence the criteria of truth and behavior is overwhelming. How can we maintain the referential values of humanism in that space?
However, seeing how her granddaughter and her friends occupied a storage room to "have a place to laugh" gave Kallifatides a glimmer of hope. "What will you do? Just laugh?" "Doesn't that seem like much to you?" the cleaning lady replied. A refuge in the organized chaos of social media?
Kallifatides asks herself: "What do we adults need?" "Peace, democracy, the rule of law, equality between men and women: this is what it means to be European." A phrase that takes on special relevance at a time when Europe is shrinking day by day, adapting to authoritarian impulses, losing power and presence, and appearing somewhat more disoriented. When respect is lost, social bonds break down and insolence gains ground: those who think they have no limits, that everything is permissible for them, grow in number. And the nihilistic impulse is highly destructive: it shatters basic agreements to impose the demands of those who believe they have nothing to respect: not people, not laws, not even basic consensus.
