O valor da voz

Cuida do

T Tempo

A velha abre a boca --

Calem-se todos: É

Um sopro sem ouro. Dura pesada

Para o sempre.

Um entre-mundos.

de Karinna Alves Gulias

On the judgement of loopholes

There has been a time when we spent our free time in our bedrooms together with our journals, writing and thinking about the meaning of life in quiet, comfortable boredom. When we experienced our subjectivity to great extent, explored in its highest form either from reading poetry and its ambiguities or from not understanding something.

Loopholes. Let’s read this word without its pejorative meaning. Rethink it. What does it mean? A hole though which we may see light coming in and that permits eyes to observe. An ambiguity or omission that allows for escaping something. Could it be the unquestionable objectivity we are escaping from? Our rational thoughts? Or reality as we know?

Loopholes. What can someone NOT say and consequently make us feel it is about us, always? The silence of subjectivity. Always present. Loopholes.

Before the advent of internet, when we met ourselves alone, quietly, with a book, we found those moments of subjectivity in the silence of poetic metaphors. Who has ever read a poem and found not themselves there? Always in the silence of the loopholes. I will find I there, in the cracks of the text. From that moment onwards, even though with sane skepticism, I will believe the author knows me better than my mother. Or do I know myself better than my mother?

In the age of online social network, however, the loopholes are in everyday written social interactions. It is very hard, although a superficial window of interaction. What an acquaintance says indirectly on his or her wall, may they know or not, will affect absolutely everyone that reads it. Every single day, when we log in to the written reality of social life and see a  judgemental message thrown onto their wall to no one and, at the same time, to everyone, how many will suffer by finding in it their superficial I being judged? How can I not find myself in it? It is a loophole! It is like asking humans to go against their nature, by avoiding finding their subjectivity while dealing with the unknown.

But what kind of silence do you think we humans should be focusing our selves to reading or listening to? Superficial judgements sent out into the air by acquaintances or deeply thought metaphors from a poem or poetic prose?

We hardly talk to each other anymore, as in debating and exchanging ideas. We now throw superficial ideas, (judgements, stereotypes or citations) and react. Still, our generation and the ones before and after are not equipped to deal with a written reality. And if we can't deal with the ambiguities of written text, without suffering with our subjectivity, how can we deal even further with the ambiguity of reality itself? Now that we can have AI generated videos that easily pass for recordings of facts and phenomena. 

I think this is time for us to rethink our educational system and the way we interact with each other and reality. Interpretation has been and will always be key to human development and personal happiness. And so our understanding of how the silence of words affects our subjectivity and the way it helps us construct our identities.
 
 
by Karinna Alves Gulias