The Misfortunes of Others / Fernando Dámaso

  1. The son of a friend, living in Sweden for years, with a Swedish family, sends an email with interesting photos of people in times of natural disasters and other such. The photos are heartrending, but what prompted this post are the texts that accompany them. Summaries indicate that there is always someone worse off; then why complain.
  2. I’ve never been conformist and consider the philosophy of conformity a waste. If as human beings we were conformists, we would still be living in the Stone Age, with none of the achievements, for better or worse, that exist today.
  3. Accepting our misfortunes, because there is someone in the world even more unfortunate, is an unacceptable attitude for someone with average intelligence. It is not looking down, but looking up, that leads to development. People aspire to excel and progress, and take not the losers as examples, but the winners. It is right and what has always happened.
  4. In my country, especially, we tried to make everyone equal in poverty and not in wealth. So we liquidated the rich and the wealth created, and turned them into poor citizens. So we achieved social equality. The formula is not original, and previously had been applied elsewhere, with similar disastrous results.
  5. I think if we ask Cubans who are here, or in Sweden, or another country, to not complain and accept our misfortunes quietly, as there are people in worse conditions in other countries, it causes inertia and stagnation, our two major ills. Fortunately, not too many people think this way. Being dissatisfied and struggling to leave our troubles behind, with our eyes on those who have made it, is a civic position. Our reality does not cloud our vision, a thing which, unfortunately, sometimes happens to those who are far away from it.

November 1, 2010