Of metaphors and earthquakes

I am writing this article when the real magnitude of the two Venezuelan earthquakes is still unknown. For now, the number of fatalities does not align at all with that of the missing persons, which foreshadows a terrible outcome. Each generation usually experiences, near or far, some natural catastrophe that invites reflection, but those that mark us the most are perhaps those contemplated through the eyes of a child. Mine —I was born in 1964— witnessed on the ashen TV of late Francoism the Managua earthquake of 1972. I was eight years old and I remember harrowing images, because at that time there was little concern for hurting or not hurting the sensibilities of the public during children's hours. Somoza's ultra-corrupt dictatorship had built entire neighborhoods with precarious materials, and an earthquake of significant, but not extreme, magnitude —6.2 on the Richter scale— killed between 15,000 and 20,000 people (the real figure was never disclosed) and left about 300,000 homeless. Anastasio Somoza then became a living metaphor for the greed that leads to disaster. A parallel generational evocation related to that country: shortly after, the Nicaraguan singer Carlos Mejía Godoy triumphed in these parts ("Son tus perjúmenes, mujer...").Many generations before mine, in the year 1755, another earthquake, in this case of apocalyptic dimensions, devastated the city of Lisbon. Between 30,000 and 50,000 people lost their lives there. Here the metaphors went beyond the literary description of a tragic event. In the midst of the Age of Enlightenment, this had a great impact on the main European intellectuals, who opened important debates. The catastrophe became an intellectual earthquake as profound as the geological one. The destruction of the city and the death of so many people shook — and this is no sinister play on words — the enlightened confidence in the rational order of the world. In Candide, Voltaire reacted with unprecedented virulence, mocking Leibniz through the character of Pangloss. The catastrophe forced a rethinking of the relationship between God, nature, and history: is evil an accident, a test, or perhaps the realization that the world does not correspond to any moral purpose? The discussion was projected into literature, theology, and politics, anticipating the turn towards an increasingly skeptical sensibility. The Enlightenment ceased to be optimistic and even confident; Voltaire formulated it cruelly: in the face of evil, one should not seek metaphysical consolation, but human responsibility. The old metaphors about progress and the lights of reason underwent notable changes. In general, they darkened.

While recalling Voltaire's novella (I read it as a teenager and liked it a lot), I was thinking about who today would play the French philosopher and who the German Leibniz. For an obvious matter of historical contexts, it would be imprudent to establish a strict symmetry with contemporary authors. A bit off the cuff, and without any pretension of locating an exact current equivalent, a good equivalent for Pangloss/Leibniz would perhaps be Steven Pinker, who argues (with data) that violence is decreasing, health is improving, rationality is advancing, and I don't know how many other things; a postmodern version of the “best of all possible worlds”. On Voltaire's side, and without moving from the Anglo-Saxon cultural area, the role could be played, with many nuances, by John N. Gray. And in France, perhaps Pascal Bruckner, or even Emmanuel Todd.It is very likely that, as has happened with other recent natural disasters, the deadly earthquake in Venezuela will not generate any reflection on issues that deeply affect us. The omnipresence of the image, as well as the fictional recreations of events through artificial intelligence, make any attempt to go beyond the immediacy of events seem meaningless. If we add to this the tearful environmental sentimentalism that tends to exclude rational reflection, everything suggests that we will not dare to look the subject in the eye: a reality that seems more than indifferent to our technological illusions. Mother Nature is an old metaphor that grates in circumstances like these. In fact, our relationship with her is becoming increasingly confused. By having deified the adjective natural to the point of transforming it into a synonym for good, we forget that there are few things more natural than tectonic plates and few things more artificial than a medicalized unit.