Jan
31
El reino de este mundo 2
Posted by: | January 31, 2010 | Comments Off on El reino de este mundo 2
I guess the point of this book is to examine, as President Obama so eloquently put it, the audacity of hope. Humanity, despite its brutal ways, has prevailed because of an unwillingness to give up and a desire to keep fighting despite all odds. I think this is best captured in the closing chapter of El reino de este mundo in which Ti Noel reflects that “la grandeza del hombre esta precisamente en querer mejorar lo que es.” Despite such awful suffering, years of oppression, and countless generations lost to the brutality of slavery, hope for a better world overcomes.
Permit me some philosophical reflection with regards to our species. Call me a cynic, but I am ashamed of humanity’s ability to fight over everything and anything, exploiting, oppressing and dehumanizing anyone and everyone in our path. I am ashamed that we sink to astonishingly low levels of exploitation in search of power and gain (i.e. the Holocaust and Rwanda) and that, sadly, we still permit these things to happen now and will continue to do so in the future. El reino de este mundo thoroughly shows us how hope and devastation recur in a cyclic fashion and how history, both the good and the bad parts, repeats itself. Peace is rare and short-lived and unity is often found upon alignment against a common enemy. The world will be united in working together only when evil aliens come and threaten our existence (apparently climate change isn’t threatening enough, though, as long as we have Bill Pullman as President and Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith fighting as the good guys, I’ll rest assured that we shall prevail. Independence Day anyone?) Anyways, in this day and age I struggle to maintain optimism for a better future, especially with the astounding odds we face (I’m an American so when I say “we” I’m referring to my fellow countrymen and countrywomen, although our fates are greatly intertwined with those of the rest of the world, especially Canadians). What with two wars, trillions of dollars in debt, high unemployment, a faulty health care system and faltering economy, the threat of a massively flooded health care market as millions of baby-boomers prepare to retire, no jobs, a congress that can’t agree on anything, not to mention a changing climate that threatens our very existence, its tough to keep your chin up. However, what El reino de este mundo can teach us is that while we can’t escape the fact that we’re a brutal species, we have the “capaz de amar en medio de las plagas,” we have the ability to find beauty in harshest of times and can be comforted that there is greatness in our audacity to hope.
The show ain’t over till the fat lady sings.
