Author: A.R. Sandru

The divider between me and danger, between contemplation and confrontation gave in.

The scenery

This story does not take place in my hometown like part 1 and 2. It takes place in a train. A romanian train leaving from the seaside and crossing the entire country. The attribute “romanian” is very important here. A Romanian train is not a German or a French, not even a Hungarian or Polish train. Romanian trains are wonderful, but challenging beasts. They travel at pace speeds and let you enjoy every bit of view you can spot through the dirty windows. When I say at pace speed, I mean exactly that – they go along at the top speed of a donkey carying a heavy load on its back. I love that with a strange devotion.

I am simple man, and as a simple man I normally get dizzy and nauseous in German trains that fly accross the nicely ordered agricultural lands, that incline in curves to compensate for the high speeds. Romanian trains on the other hand understand human nature and do not rush you. Instead, they invite you on a stroll, on a very long, slow and contemplative stroll. They have their disadvantages though. They are old – even the new ones are old. They still have compartments – nowadays there are trains without compartments too, but when this story took place, all trains had compartments. A compartment – for those that do not know – is an enclosed space in a train-wagon that usually accomodates six passangers. A train-wagon has several compartments aligned along a corridor. The corridor was used – back in those days – for walking, stretching ones legs, and smoking – as well as for the occasional drunk/s and their singing. This story isn’t about drunks though.

The charachters

I was returning from the seaside with my cousin, and we were seated in a compartiment as described above. My cousin was existentially confused at the time – more than now anyways – and I was a simple teenager. As such a simple teenager I had no well defined conceptions of the world, just some simple-minded expectations, that never got fullfiled. We were both anxious beings at the time – my cousin more then me due to his existential confusion. We were hoping that we will be able to ride back home in an empty compartment, to not deal with people and small talk. We were hoping to engage in the stroll that trains invite us to take. This did not happen.

The compartiment had six seats, as mentioned. Of the six only two remained unoccupied. I and my cousin took up two seats. The other two were occupied by two existentially non-confused guys, that showed no sign of any kind of anxiety. They were well built and aggressively tattooed. They had tattoos on their fists. It’s important to mention that at the time of this story, tattoos were in no way popular. A tattoo carried big weight back then, especially fist tattoos. At the sight of our new companions we became more anxious, and both existiantially confused. Another characteristic of Romanian trains is important here. They are lawless. There is nobody mainting peace and order. I grew up with stories of train conductors hiding in the lavatory to avoid a heavy beating from non-paying customers. We were on our own and we knew it.

The who-knows-what

We accordingly resorted to conflict strategies. I attempted to assert my authority by means of an angry look and a sort of skeptical, misanthropical distance – God knows why. My cousin on the other hand, decided to be as non-violent as he could – unconsciously I presume. He crossed his legs in the least masculine way possible and started reading poems – to himself thankfully. At this time I became enraged with my cousin. He was showing weakness and his weakness was rubbing on to me by association – at least in my simple mind. My rage was visible and his confusion to my rage was all the more visible. Our companions noticed this and they were looking at us in a weird way. We interpreted this as a sign of aggression. Instinctively we both took refuge to the corridor.

Train corridors are usually no refuge – they are a hotspot for smokers and drinkers that love to engage with others. Nothing is normal about this story though. The corridor was empty. We were delighted. Compartments are separated from the corridor by a sliding glass door and a window on each side of the door.

We were somewhat relieved but still cautious. We were constantly glancing at the companions beyond the glass door. We were convinced they were observing us and planning their attack. After a few minutes of absurd dialogue I decided to lean on one of the windows – the divider between us and them – in order to ignore the menacing views. This proved to be a double sided sword.

The divider

I was feeling at ease looking through the corridor windows at the sights outside , ignoring any fictitious danger and letting myself be absorbed by the passing of time. The flipside soon followed.

The trains are old and so are their windows. The divider between me and danger, between contemplation and confrontation gave in. The entire window I was leaning against fell down. It fell down hitting the two proud owners of aggressive fist tattoos on their heads. It fell down in silence and suspension of all beliefs this world can sustain. It fell down as a void absorbing all hope with it. A temporal lacuna followed. For a brief second there was no time, just a timeless train, strolling along the Romanian plains, no change, no future, no hope, no past, no action.

The annulled moment soon gave way to passing seconds and with them to rushing adrenaline and confused actions. I entered the compartiment with a weird mix of excuses and swearing:

“I am so so sorry … these damned trains … are you ok … nobody ever fucking fixes them ….”

One of the two, holding his head with one of his hands, mumbled friendly.

“Yes, don’t worry. Are you ok?” he started smiling.

I obviously ignored his friendly gestures and was feeding of my adrenaline and panic – perfect nutrients for enthropic acts and gusts of fury. I pick up the window – it wasn’t broken. It fell down in one piece. The windows – manufactured in my hometown – were double paned and therefore heavy. The poor guy must have felt the blow of my demise quite strongly. I took the window and tried to fit it back in its frame. This made me act in a less rational way than before. At this point I was also afraid that I was going to have to pay for the dammage I caused involuntarily.

The upper part of the window did fit back together. The lower part however refused. I started pounding on the window with my fist hoping I can restore the divider between me and the fictitious danger. My cousin was looking at me in despair and laughter. The two men tattoed on their fists suddenly experienced existential confusion and I was caught up in my own hopeless attempts to restore what has fallen. The divider never did fit back into its frame and the conductor later told me that it was always broken.

SantaFe doesn’t employ any complicated language here. He sticks to a factual, simple, plain vocabulary to describe a somber image. The description matches nevertheless the overall state of the intended representation. Hunger is simple, hunger is powerful. It is factual and present all too often, unfortunately.

This is not a description of basic needs though. It goes beyond this and packs the force of the simplest, yet most effective morality: that no one should starve, as Adorno rightly notices. Hunger is not a mere physiological need of survival, but is a powerful political and moral phenomenon. Why is the abolishment of hunger the simplest, yet most effective morality for Adorno? In minima moralia Adorno sees hunger as the basic entrapment of individuals in the machinery of progress-society when understood in the logic of basic needs that oppose free acts. He refers here most probably to Kantian morality, that propounds that the subject needs to be its own law-giver, which can only occur when empirical, dirty, impure drives are not a hindrance for our free acts. People can be free, only when not determined by exterior, impure drives such as hunger. The more one purifies themselves* from these impure drives, the more free they are. In a progress society this means that the more one produces, the more wealth one accumulates, the more free one is.

This reading does not do justice to Kant’s work, but it does capture the misreading of Kant in liberal and neo-liberal societies. Production is a means of becoming free, of liberating yourself from hunger so you can indulge in the non-barbaric activities of the enlightened. This logic however promotes oppression of the ones that produce. Hunger and the inherent drive to suppress fuels production. Furthermore it marginalizes completely those who do not produce, who cannot produce, and casts them away at the outskirts of starvation. Produce or be superfluous! This is the imperative of progress society. Be productive and efficient or be invaluable.

In this framework any pleasure, any inactivity, as well as any basic need are defined as trivial and vulgar ” by the commodity character, which consigns the pleasures to idiocy, by the brutality of command, whose terrifying echo resounds in the high spirits of the rulers, finally by their fear of their own superfluousness “. (minima moralia) In contrast to this, to abolish hunger independently of securing production based liberties, means to emancipate society from progress. It means to make place for the vulgarity of inactivity and the irrationality of laziness as non-productivity.

When SantaFe tells the story of hunger, he does not sing of a basic physiological need, but of oppression and marginalization. He talks of a person that does not fit, that makes no sense, that needs to be eliminated by progress as its own self-justification. A starving person is in this logic no person at all, but a wandering ghost of self-asserting individualism. SantaFe’s song says it better:

The person described here identifies themselves with the logic of production. They accept the marginal, solitary, unpopulated region of existence that society has ascribed them. The song acknowledges the crude divide between subsistence and the liberties of production. The one that starves struggles to survive with not access to love, refuge, or recognition. The ones that starve inhabit the solitary existence of anonymity. They embody the cruel judgement of progress-society that strips them of the right to identity.

Hunger is the anonymous, hidden face of progress society and production libertarianism. It has no name and hides, so that nobody sees it (hunger). If you were to visit Mexico City – or any other big city for that matter – you would realize that hunger hides in plain sight. It is not hidden from sight, but from consciousness. The sick and starving in front of the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven are not hidden from sight. They are seen, but they are seen as shock for tourists that deal with it with fleeting empathy and a shared photo, as disgrace for locals, as images that have to be dealt with by the government. They have no name, they have no place.

There is no hunger for progress-society. There is only vulgarity and impure drives that eventually will get resolved, as long as we produce enough. This is the promise of progress that oppreses and condemns.

It doesn’t take long to see this. Look at the difficulties of getting tested for Corona in the US and other countries, at the fear the cost of being ill instills, the fear of hunger in the absence of a universal healthcare. Look at those in Europe fleeing to their home-countries because they have no proper insurance in the countries they work in. Romania alone has seen thousands upon thousand returning home in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, look the refugees stuck at the border with Greece, packed together in large masses, with no means of defense, with no means of escape. For us, complaining safely in our houses, they have no proper name, just a general one: refugees. They embody for us a distant universal injustice, but remain anonymous while we remain irresponsible.

“In the abstract representation of universal injustice, every concrete responsibility collapses”

Adorno, minima moralia

* I am using here the plural form of pronouns for a gender neutral language.

The scenery, the meeting, the terrorist, the policeman. A tale of confusion, a sunny town, weird men, and angry policemen.

The scenery

Again in my hometown – or village by mexican standards. It was summer and I was home to visit my familiy. I was coming from a small German University town, a small bubble of perfection, where the streets are cleaner than most hospital floors. I was in the center of my hometown. Again, nothing special, just some old buildings and a park in the middle. Wait! There is something special. In the backdrop of the park one can see the old church tower – still the tallest building in the town. The tower is the second most leaned after the tower of Pisa – or so they say. None of this is important though for my story. I am just setting the mood.

All around the park there are old buildings, beautiful buildings. In one of them, next to a Montessori school and a betting place lied a bookstore. In front of the bookstore was the police department – in a hideous, blueish building, that looked like a small town police department should look like. Inbetween the bookstore and the blueish building was a street. At the end of the stree a barrier blocked the entrance to cars in the old center. Inbetween the bookstore and the police department, and right next to the barrier were two big street flower pots. They lost their function however as flower pots and just became dirt pots – no flowers.

The meeting

I was supposed to meet my cousin in front of the bookstore and then go for a coffee. I arrived early and had to wait for him. Me, being a tall lazy person with back issues, decided to sit down on the flower pots. I had my wallet and my phone in my back pocket though. In order to sit down, I took them out. I was now sitted down with my wallet and my phone in my hand. The day was quite pleasant. It was warm and sunny and there weren’t too many people around. This is an important detail for my general state at the moment. Besides being a lazy tall person with back issues, I am also generally not fond of big crowds. I was therefore feeling at peace with myself in an empty, sunny town.

“What are you doing here?” a strange voice asks me.

I look around to find a man, of medium stature, looking at me insistently. I didn’t get to respond.

“What are you doing here I asked!?”

He was a burly man, with an incredible amount of chest hair exploding through his half buttoned down shirt. I remember this the most. It was quite impressive. He didn’t just have chest hair, he had a forest on his chest. He was probably in his mid fities. I can’t be sure however. My age assessing skills have greatly deteriorated since I have been living in Germany. A man in his seventies in Germany looks like a man in his fifties in Romania. Anyway, he was past his primetime.

Nevertheless, he had the build of a hard labourer. Hard labourers are the strongest people on this Earth. I don’t care how much you work out and how strict your diet is, a man that worked with his hands all his life is stronger than you. His voice was quite conflictual, so I decided to stand up before answering. I was anticipating a fist in my general direction already. I was determined to avoid a conflict at all costs however. You never pick a fight with a hard labourer.

The terrorist

“I am waiting for somebody!” I tried to say in a calm but asserting manner.

“You’re waiting ha?” he replied in a way showing his complete lack of trust in me.

“Yeah! why?!”

“Show me you ID!”

“Show you my ID? Why?” he was obviously no policeman.

“Just show me your ID!” he insists

“No, I won’t show you my ID.”

At this point was mostly angry with my cousin for not showing up on time. I could’ve avoided this whole situation. The man was not fidgeting and he seemed quite sure of himself. He was reaching in his pocket quite often though, so I felt a bit panicky. You never know when a knife might pop up and greet the sun.

“Just show me you ID! Are you a terrorist?” he asked me. At this point I was sure he was mentally deranged, and was feeling more scared than before.

“No! What’s wrong with you?!”

“Well why are you standing here all suspicious with your phone and wallet in your hand?…”

His question completely disarmed me. There was no logic there, just a bundle of words and thoughts suddenly charging at me full force. Then he completes his verbal charge.

“And you also have this beard…” He was pointing at my beard in total dissaray.

At that point I knew. There is indeed no logic, just a bundle of words, associations of images that drive him and his fears.

The policeman, the terrorist, and the angry man

My cousin was still missing and I was still angry with him. My agile mind suddenly realized at that moment that I was standing in front of the police department. So I decided to make use of that. Still, I couldn’t just shout for help. That would be overly dramatic and would damage my reputation. Not that I had one, but I was in a weird fighting mode, and somehow I kept thinking about my childhood friends. They would make fun of anybody that avoids conflict and would isolate them completely. I didn’t want to be a paria amongst the friends I haven’t seen in 10 years or so. So I decided to compromise and I told him in the most aggresive way possible:

“You want to see my ID!? Then let’s go to the police you madman!” I might have used a more aggressive word.

Then, I start walking towards the blueish building and to my utter surprise … he was actually following me. I think he thought it was a good idea. As I was walking in the police station however, the absurdity of it all hits me. What was I supposed to tell the policeman? This man wasn’t harming me, he wasn’t robbing me. He was just asking to see my ID. It was too late, I had to say something.

“This man wants to see my ID” That’s all I said and I thought the policeman will make fun of me – just like my childhood friends. Instead…

“You want to see his ID?! Who the fuck do you think you are? You’re lucky his such a nice guy (he was talking about me). If you would’ve asked me I would’ve kicked your ass so hard you wouldn’t walk for a week!” The charge continued and he was incredibly virulent. I actually felt sorry for the man asking me for my ID … and then he talks.

“Aha! So that’s the way it is in this country. I want to help and this is what I get in return!

“Help! Who!” said the policeman.

“You! I thought he was a terrorist! Just look at his beard” I have to be honest. All this attention my beard was getting made me feel proud.

“Are you a terrorist?” said the policeman.

“No”.

“There! He’s not a terrorist! Now get the fuck out!”

We actually got the fuck out.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were a terrorist.” The man with a forest on his chest told me. “Well, see you around!” he told me in the most jovial way possible and left.

Right after that my cousin shows up.

“Where the fuck were you?!” I ask in complete and absolute confusion.