Spanish Civil War – FINN JANNING

‘It is happening again,’ says the giant to FBI Special agent Dale Cooper in David Lynch’s mystery series Twin Peaks. This sentence came to me today, as the trial against 12 Catalan separatist leaders began in Madrid. The sentence made me reflect:

Witnessing the Catalan separatists’ campaign for independence, I couldn’t help but recall the warning signals revealed by my old German teacher when he showed us the symbols and manipulation used by German supremacists.

What concerned me was not just the flags; rather, it was their degradation of the rest of Spain while simultaneously elevating themselves. Similarly, when the separatists claimed to be victims, suppressed as an endangered species, I saw no real victims, only a very calculated form of control (I don’t refer to the unnecessary police brutality October 2017, but to life in general in Catalonia, see also Compassion in Catalonia).

I think that the mixture of creating a culture of victimisation combined with establishing a society of control, where our minds are controlled through unconscious social conditioning, is what makes the Catalan separatists powerful, but also scary if one casts an eye over history.

It’s common to view what is happening in Catalonia through the lens of history, especially the Spanish Civil War, which took place from 1936 to 1939. And it goes without saying that General Francisco Franco ranks among the worst dictators in human history.

Still, some simple facts should be pointed out: today, Spain is not a totalitarian regime; Spain is no more Francoland than Germany today is Hitlerland. Contentions to the contrary are as incongruous as they are wrong.

To clarify another fact: the Catalan language and culture are not under threat today. On the contrary, instead of giving children the opportunity of a bilingual education, most schools in Catalonia teach only in Catalan. Spanish is being taught as a foreign language. Through this, a basic right is being taken away from Spanish citizens.

For the separatists, language is not a means of communication, but an identity marker; it’s a password that separates ‘true’ Catalans from those Catalans who feel Spanish. Hereby, the separatists have – quite paradoxically, in the style of Franco – created a control system that differentiates and categorizes people.

What is needed is not more communication for or against; rather, it’s noncommunication; a reflective pause that eludes the current communicative control in which people blindly say and do what they say and do because this is what other people say and do.

Unfortunately, such a break seems unrealistic. The PR campaign of the Catalan separatists can’t stop without everything collapsing. To make things even worse, the turbulence of the last few years has awakened other nationalists in Spain, such as the political party Vox.

Perhaps, here we are at the core of the problem: All identity markers, whether national or cultural, are prisons. Nothing more than fictions. The problem with the novel written by the Catalan separatists is not that it is full of lies and exaggerations; rather, that it’s provincially tiring because all the characters are stereotypical and far too predictable. It’s a fantasy that has lost its grip on reality.

The challenge in Catalonia – and elsewhere in the world – is to regain trust in humanity. So far, the separatists have mostly promoted distrust in everything and everyone but themselves and their world view. Yet, without basic trust between humans, life cannot function.

Democracy is the ongoing organisation of disagreement. For example, I disagree strongly when artists and comedians in Spain are hindered in their right to express themselves freely – including when they criticise nations, politicians, and religions. But I also believe that people who deliberately violate the laws of the constitution should be held juridically responsible. To violate the law is to disrespect the principle of the equality of all citizens. Since all human beings are, by definition, different, the only thing that makes us the same, socially, is the law.

A democracy stresses that we are in it together. All of us. Equally. Here and now. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catalan, Danish, a man, a woman, white, black, speak this language or that. Writing this seems embarrassingly banal, yet I see many around me who appear to have forgotten this fundamental concept. For this reason, ‘it is happening again’: the victimization, the exaggerations, the lies …

This opinion was first published in Spain in English, 17th February 2019

In The Most Good You Can Do, philosopher Peter Singer tells us how we can all do better through “effective altruism”, which he describes as a solidly ethical way of living.

For those who are unfamiliar with Singer, he is a prominent ethicist, a utilitarian who has written about animal liberation and practical ethics, which is the practice of applying ethics to our daily decisions.

Singer describes “good” as a world with less suffering and more happiness. If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands…the more people clapping, the better.

In The Most Good You Can Do, Singer takes on the roles of preacher, salesman and philosopher. The book is not about philosophy; instead, Singer writes to inspire people to become more qualified philanthropists. He wants to convince us that we should earn more money so we can donate more money. The premise is that living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good we can.

What is the most good? Effective altruists think more about the number of people they can help than about helping particular individuals. The numbers are reflected in their donations; they give money to those organizations which they believe will do the most good. Effective altruism is ethical investment where the return on investment is the greater good of the many.

Singer mentions several individuals who are effective altruists and lists organizations that can help one decide where and how much money to donate. His message is that it is ethically good to earn to give, and one should use one’s reason more than one’s emotions when deciding where to donate.

“Earning to give is a distinctive way of doing good,” Singer writes. When I read that I can’t help thinking of the Catalonia region of Spain. Around 50 percent of the voting Catalans seek independence from Spain because, for example, the region pays 10 percent of its gross national product to the rest of Spain. Few mention that the rest of Spain is less fortunate compared with Catalonia, with its attractive Costa Brava coastline, numerous museums and frequent great football games. Sharing with non-Catalans doesn’t seem to be an attractive option.

Another way of illustrating this involves different forms of empathy, such as:

Empathic concern– the tendency to experience feelings of warmth and compassion for other people.

Personal distress– feelings of personal unease and discomfort in reaction to the emotions of others.

Perspective taking– tendency to adopt the point of view of other people.

Fantasy– tendency to imagine oneself experiencing the feelings of other people.

The first two terms refer to emotional empathy, or one’s manner of feeling about others. The last two refer to cognitive empathy, or “knowing what something is like for another being.”

Emotional empathy can be related to Catalans who want to become an independent country; they still seem traumatized by the Spanish Civil War, and define themselves negatively, as not Spanish. They feel warm toward full-blooded Catalans, but have varying degrees of discomfort about the rest.

Singer contrasts emotional empathy with cognitive empathy. This is where numbers affect us more than the individuals with whom we identify. For example, a cognitive empathizer would recognize that during the Spanish Civil War, the entire country suffered. The war was not a football match. Spain bled, not just one region.

Singer quotes psychologist Paul Bloom: “Our best hope for the future is not to get people to think of all humanity as family–that’s impossible. It lies, instead, in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.”

Singer argues convincingly in favor of reason over emotion, but reason and emotion are not necessarily contradictory. Let me use Catalonia again as an example. Communism did not work worldwide because it was not based on compassion and love; it was based on class struggle and dictatorial control, which in the end failed, as the Dalai Lama once pointed out. Similarly, the Catalan project is based more on financial greed than compassion. If the Catalans were effective altruists they would still be proud of their industrious attitude, but only because they could do good with their money, for example, donating to regions in greater need. More developed empathy–all four varieties–combined with reason would make Catalans less protective. More generous.

Altruism, Singer writes, is contrasted with egoism. However, altruism does not require unrealistic self-sacrifice. One may realize that it is possible to share one’s fortune with those less fortunate. Perhaps, one might even realize how everything is interconnected.

Thomas Aquinas was quoted as saying “It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another’s property in a case of extreme need, because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need.”

In that vein, Aquinas would not likely have thought it wrong of anybody to take what they need from Singer’s book, particularly if it meant learning how to help others. If you would like to see whether Singer’s book has something in it for you, visit these homepages:

http://www.effectivealtruism.org/

http://www.givewell.org/

Tag: Spanish Civil War

Is it happening again?

Earning to Give