Mythopoetics

Anthropology has taught us that early hunter groups burials not only aimed at fabulous trips to other worlds but that they also obeyed to a definite and prosaic fear of the deceased, especially when it was the corpse of a Chieftain or warrior that everyone knew to be of bad temper. They put stones upon the corpse in order to immobilize it and avoid unpleasant visits at night claiming its favorite toys or wives. In this sense, pyramids represent the greatest achievement in anti-zombie technology, disguised as the macro ego-trip of a deluded human being. Analogously, philosophy has tried to bury the corpse of the metaphysics of the King-God under thousand rocks, but the resilient body keeps coming back to life, annoyingly, embarrassing the philosophical family like a poor and ugly distant relative which appears in the middle of an epistemological party. For the scientific community, the smell is unbearable, though they seem to ignore the annoyance when the mummy presents itself in t...

Horse Head Nebula. Hubblesite.org                              We do not only live in uncertain times but also in uncertain spaces. In fact, it is not only our problem, for that wonderful myth of the fabric of space-time is the picture of a very precarious situation of general instability. According to General Relativity, matter determines the geometry of space-time, so when matter moves geometry changes. On the other hand, according to Heisenberg’s principle, we cannot determine the position of matter with accuracy, i.e. we cannot establish its geometrical properties. Putting the two statements together: matter determines geometry, but the geometry of matter cannot be determined. Then, what are we talking about when we say space-time?   The problem of this wide scope uncertainty (as wide as it gets) is no other than its biblical dimensions, for both theories are the Bible of Physics and thus the very...

  Another trait of human law ontology is offered in the concept of self-reliance, not so much in Emerson’s terms, as a dialectic of great men and their struggle with their society -an annex to genius religions - but as the feeling of being at home in life. This is my life, my here and now in the living process, and I trust it in its plain movements, accept its limitations and particular nonsenses, our meaningful and meaningless myths. I soar with its high hormones and get low on frustrations, for life is my house no less than death and oblivion and astronomical dances of annihilation; I know it and do not deny it anymore.   Emerson proposed: insist on yourself, never imitate. Such naïve adolescent bravery –I recognize it for I had it too- is a drive towards individuation that can hardly be avoided, and is felt in different degrees by all, therefore is the common, the opposed to your individual self (that narrative of your emotions in relation to the group), and not by ...

We should not mistake the predicate of existence with the human proclamation of being here and now . “ To be here ” is a positive action of the subject, a hard one in fact, a kind of fight with the universal law narratives which deny anything human from the all too human perspective of a narrative of domination. But when we say that something exist s, we are simply reifying a transcendental property which conditions us within an ideological frame. A predicate is a determination of an object, its inscription within a particular (finite) frame of properties, physical (space-time, weight, etc.) or social (legal, aesthetical, etc.). ( (1)   Suppose that “exists” is a predicate, then to say that “ a ” exists is to say that “ a belongs to a particular frame of properties”, say F 1 . ( (2)     F 1 is a frame of properties, but not a frame which includes all properties, for there is not a single object “ a ” which can have all properties, so it could not belong to such f...

    The fundamental primitive determination of the mythico-ritual axis of the human law is the declaration of being here and now. I am here and you are here; everything else has to be understood from such statements and accommodate to its emotional topology. It is an ontology of vitalism and adventure, of open roads and new beginnings, thus, of dangers, though also of fulfillments: the past has to come to meet us right here, now, mute gods have to make way for an endless desire of communication. I talk to thee and thus I narrate my identity. We are here, detached from kin and lineage, our only line is the horizon, and living so we honor the ancestors, and give them room in the new temple of the genetic code, together with bacteria, plants and beautiful animals. Prophets, Saints, Messiahs and Gods don’t live here, but we do, HERE…NOW... The dreams of the past cannot be our present nightmares, they won’t be.    To be here is to be precarious, an outcast from the...

      In the preface to the Princeton Companion to Mathematics , the editors state that the aim of the book was to improve the communication among modern mathematicians which frequently do not understand the papers of one another even if they are from areas that appear to be quite close. They do recognize that it is not a healthy state of affairs though it is the unavoidable result of the overspecialization of the mathematical science. Such precariousness of the science it is even more unsettling since mainstream epistemology still considers the mathematization of all and every science its ultimate goal. The idea is the development of a Characteristica Generalis - in the Leibnizian tradition-, a general language that would unify our intellectual experiences. Obviously we cannot have it both ways, for the unconnected character in praxis of the different fields of mathematics and the further mathematization of all fields of knowledge, which would break up in new mathem...

    To live like the character of a book, by an inspiring myth, to die if needed. This narrative of domination which ties us to a foundational myth and is enacted socially as love for the Mother-Father Land, for the ancestors, prophets and messiahs of the group, becomes at once a critique of the social values when the totem is called Dulcinea del Toboso. Like a theorem proven from wrong assumptions, but reaching the right conclusion nonetheless, Alonso Quijano’s crusade against injustice, dullness and hypocrisy of life is still today a lesson on the value of ideals: to transform the world through love for the receding horizon. Dulcinea might be ugly and rude, with overnight onion-salad breath, but when surfing the sunset colors, as she constantly does in Don Quixote’s eyes, no other Queen or divine entity compares to her. Dulcinea is indifferent to us, and so it is with the rest of our ideals; they are simply our wonderful madness or innocent interpretation of the receive...