Ricardo F Morin April 17 through May 14, 2026 In transit
A thank you may be spoken and still leave little behind it. The words are said, the gesture acknowledged, yet what follows continues almost unchanged.
What resolves a necessity that could not otherwise have been resolved leaves more than a momentary obligation behind it. It alters conduct. The difficulty is not always in recognizing what has been received, but in remaining openly shaped by it afterward.
At times, what is received passes nearly unnoticed. It is recognized in the moment, then absorbed into ordinary expectation. Nothing changes.
At other times, acknowledgment is followed almost immediately by the resumption of guarded conduct, as though nothing had passed between them requiring either person to remain changed by what is owed to them.
Something similar occurs when acknowledgment becomes routine. The words remain intact while their force weakens. What once carried weight becomes part of ordinary exchange.
Resentment may emerge from the same movement. Withdrawal does not always arise because nothing was received, but because remaining openly affected by it becomes difficult to sustain over time.
The change does not announce itself directly. Replies shorten. Warmth recedes into formality. Attention weakens without disappearing. Continuity remains while something within it becomes less available.
Part of the difficulty lies in the human capacity to narrow perception around self-preservation while remaining partially aware of what is being diminished, avoided, or abandoned.
None of this proves that recognition was false. Yet when guardedness repeatedly restores itself before acknowledgment can continue altering conduct, relations gradually persist more through form than through the openness that once gave them force.
What remains active through form alone may continue outwardly for long periods while gradually losing the openness that first allowed recognition to alter conduct.
To remain capable of recognition is not to magnify what is given, but to allow what has been received to continue altering conduct without immediately reducing it to balance, habit, irritation, or distance.
Ricardo F. Morín April 17 through May 14, 2026 In transit
A conversation, a concern, a loss or a moment of joy begin to take shape when they remain present long enough to demand attention, alter our conduct or affect our relation with others. Our lives do not acquire form through intensity or through the scarcity of what occurs.
There are days that pass leaving almost no trace. Conversations are forgotten. One concern gives way to another before it can alter what follows.
At other times, everything demands attention at once. Attention passes from one incident to another before anything acquires consequence. What is immediate displaces what needed to remain present. Priorities begin to blur into one another, and nothing retains enough presence to awaken interest.
An empty day disappears without resistance; a day in which everything demands attention dissolves in much the same way. In both cases, a conversation, a concern or a loss cease affecting the way a person responds to what unfolds around them.
Either nothing succeeds in awakening interest, or what does awaken it loses force among too many competing demands upon attention. Boredom may appear even when nothing seems to be missing.
Proportion allows a conversation, a loss, a concern or a moment of joy to remain present long enough to acquire consequence alongside one another. Without proportion, conversations, concerns and responsibilities begin to disperse before they can remain related to one another. With proportion, a conversation, a loss or a responsibility may preserve enough presence to continue affecting the way a person attends or responds.
When that relation weakens, judgment begins to weaken with it. What is trivial acquires urgency, while a loss, a responsibility or an important relation recede without drawing attention. Public life eventually reflects the same condition: noise makes it difficult to distinguish what truly demands our attention, and people begin reacting more through accumulation than through understanding.
What is near may impose itself until it occupies everything. What is distant may withdraw until it loses presence. Between those extremes, conversations, concerns and relations still manage to remain separate.
Proportion changes with the demands of life, with attention, fatigue, pressure and the capacity to remain affected by what occurs. It does not remain static. A person may come to no longer recognize what once mattered to them, not because they decided to abandon it, but because the relation to a loss, a responsibility or another person also changes under certain conditions.
Boredom appears when a conversation, a concern, a responsibility or a relation cease remaining present long enough to continue affecting the way a person attends, remembers or responds. For this reason, boredom does not depend upon how much happens or how little does.
Dissatisfaction and skepticism emerge when a conversation, a loss or a responsibility no longer preserve sufficient relation to what continues occurring around them. Dissatisfaction and skepticism are not the origin of this condition.
At times, a person continues speaking, working or responding without knowing what still preserves relation to their life. Even under those conditions, another person’s affection, a remembered conversation or someone’s presence may remain active while many concerns begin losing consequence. At times, they are the only things still preserving relation to what continues.
Proportion exists in allowing a conversation, a loss, a responsibility or a relation to preserve enough presence to continue affecting the way we attend, remember or respond to what occurs. Maintaining proportion does not consist in reducing life.
Ricardo F. Morín Buffalo Series, Nº 5 48″ x 56″ Oil on canvas 1979
*
Author’s Note
The conditions examined in this text continue those explored in “The Proportion of Boredom” and “The Impossibility of Recognition.”
+
Ricardo F. Morín April 17 through May 14, 2026 In transit
1. There are people who aspire to live as individuals of conviction because conviction appears inseparable from dignity, seriousness, or moral substance. To remain faithful to certain principles despite uncertainty, pressure, or consequence may seem necessary for self-respect itself. A person capable of conviction may appear less vulnerable to confusion, fear, or circumstance than someone who changes too easily with events or opinion.
2. Under certain conditions, conviction permits endurance. A person may continue acting despite danger, exhaustion, or sacrifice because something appears more important than comfort, approval, or self-preservation. Communities may also remain bound together through convictions strong enough to survive hardship, loss, or instability.
3. Yet convictions do not remain private for long. They shape how people judge conduct, loyalty, responsibility, and trust. What appears principled to one person may appear rigid, dangerous, or intolerant to another. The same conviction capable of sustaining courage may also narrow the conditions under which people continue recognizing one another outside allegiance alone.
4. At times, uncertainty becomes difficult to bear. A person may seek convictions not only because they appear true, but because they provide continuity when circumstances no longer seem stable enough to endure without certainty.
5. A conviction does not remain merely an opinion once a person begins to depend on it for self-respect. It enters conduct. It shapes what can be admitted without humiliation and what must be resisted so the person can remain coherent before himself. At that point, disagreement no longer arrives only as difference. It may also arrive as exposure.
6. Under such conditions, a person may defend not only certain principles, but the self organized around them. Contradiction becomes difficult to tolerate because uncertainty no longer threatens a single idea alone. It threatens the sense that one’s life still holds together, belonging, judgment, and the sense that one’s conduct remains justified before others and before oneself.
7. Yet convictions are not sustained only through conflict. They also persist through familiarity. Families, friendships, religious communities, political movements, and nations may remain bound together through convictions strong enough to survive sacrifice, hardship, or historical change. A person may inherit convictions long before examining them fully, just as another person may remain unable to abandon certain convictions despite prolonged doubt or disappointment.
8. Convictions cannot be understood through logic alone. People may continue defending ideas that no longer correspond fully with circumstance because conviction does not depend only upon evidence. It may also depend upon memory, loyalty, fear, gratitude, suffering, or the need to preserve continuity with those through whom life first acquired meaning.
9. At times, conviction permits a person to resist conditions that would otherwise reduce conduct to convenience or fear. Someone may continue defending another person despite public hostility, remain faithful to a responsibility despite exhaustion, or refuse participation in what appears degrading even when conformity would be safer. Under such conditions, conviction may preserve dignity because it resists adaptation to circumstance alone.
10. Yet the same conviction capable of sustaining courage may also narrow perception without announcing the change. A person may begin judging conduct through allegiance before attending to the singularity of those involved. What confirms conviction appears trustworthy more easily; what unsettles it begins requiring justification before it can even be considered fairly.
11. This change does not always emerge through fanaticism. It may appear through ordinary habits of interpretation. Certain words begin carrying fixed meanings before conversations fully unfold. Certain people appear predictable before they have spoken long enough to become recognizable outside inherited assumptions. Conviction then ceases remaining only a way of judging what should be trusted, defended or refused. It begins organizing perception itself.
12. Under those conditions, plurality becomes difficult to sustain. Not because difference disappears, but because difference no longer appears as something through which judgment may widen. It begins appearing instead as instability, confusion, or moral weakness.
13. A person may still believe himself fair under such conditions. He may continue listening, speaking calmly, or permitting disagreement while the boundaries of what appears acceptable have already narrowed inwardly. Conviction does not always announce the moment in which judgment begins organizing itself around allegiance. The change may remain gradual enough to appear compatible with the image a person preserves of himself as reasonable, principled, or humane.
14. At times, convictions survive less because they remain unquestioned than because abandoning them would require a person to reinterpret too much of his own life. Friendships, sacrifices, loyalties, humiliations, and hopes may remain bound to convictions that helped organize the meaning of earlier experience. Under such conditions, doubt no longer threatens a single conclusion alone. It threatens continuity with the self that endured through those experiences.
15. People may therefore defend convictions that no longer correspond fully with what they privately perceive. Public allegiance and inward uncertainty may coexist for long periods without reconciling themselves. A person may continue repeating certain beliefs because abandoning them appears more disorienting than preserving them despite contradiction.
16. Yet uncertainty carries dangers of its own. A person incapable of conviction may become vulnerable to every immediate pressure, every shifting opinion, or every promise of acceptance. Conduct begins adapting too easily to circumstance because nothing remains stable enough to resist convenience, fear, or belonging. Under such conditions, openness itself may lose coherence.
17. Human beings therefore remain exposed to opposing dangers that do not resolve one another. Conviction may preserve dignity while narrowing plurality; uncertainty may preserve openness while weakening conduct. The difficulty does not disappear by choosing one condition entirely over the other, because both arise from needs inseparable from human life.
18. This tension becomes visible during periods of instability. Under fear, humiliation, rapid social change, or prolonged uncertainty, people often seek convictions capable of restoring continuity quickly. A movement, a nation, a faith, an ideology, or a leader may then appear not merely persuasive, but necessary for preserving coherence against conditions that no longer seem bearable without certainty.
19. Under such circumstances, plurality may begin appearing less as a condition of civic life than as an obstacle to stability itself. Disagreement becomes associated with fragmentation; hesitation with weakness; ambiguity with danger. What once appeared compatible with coexistence may begin appearing incompatible with order, belonging, or survival.
20. Yet even under those conditions, convictions do not become complete. Contradictions continue appearing within every system of certainty because human experience exceeds the structures through which people attempt to hold experience together. A person may defend convictions publicly while remaining inwardly confronted by experiences that resist full reconciliation with them.
21. Convictions can preserve and disrupt human relations at the same time. They allow people to sacrifice, endure, remain faithful, and act decisively under uncertainty. Yet they may also separate human beings before they have encountered one another outside inherited loyalties, beliefs, or fears. The same convictions capable of sustaining responsibility may also prevent people from perceiving one another except through the boundaries conviction has already established.
22. Convictions do not disappear because people cannot live long without believing that certain things must be defended, preserved, or remained faithful to despite uncertainty. Under those conditions, conviction may permit courage, sacrifice, or endurance where fear alone would otherwise prevail. Yet the same convictions may also separate human beings before they have fully encountered one another outside inherited loyalties, beliefs, or fears.
Ricardo Morín Infinity One: The Grammar of Emotional Mimicry 60″x 37″ Oil on linen 2005
*
Public life today is shaped less by ideas than by emotional cues. People respond not to the content of arguments but to the register in which those arguments are delivered. Tone becomes substance; affect becomes authority. The substitution of emotional cues for argument is not accidental. It reflects a deeper cultural grammar in which individuals learn to recognize themselves not through reasoning but through emotional likeness. The most resonant voice is not the most coherent one but the one that mirrors the emotional state of the crowd. I call this phenomenon the grammar of emotional mimicry.
The press plays a central role in reinforcing this grammar. Modern media does not function as a platform for the slow work of thought; it functions as a marketplace of sentiment. Editors select, frame, and circulate stories on the basis of emotional traction rather than intellectual clarity. A confession of anguish is treated as insight. A display of distress is treated as truth. The media’s primary currency is resonance, measured not by accuracy but by the intensity of feeling it can evoke. It simply reflects the incentives of an attention economy.
Prominent authors or celebrities are often given expansive platforms to articulate personal grievances that contain little conceptual grounding. A statement such as “there is no closure for innocent suffering unless the universe holds someone accountable” is presented as a courageous moral reflection. Yet the premise collapses at first contact: suffering is not distributed according to desert, and nature does not adjudicate innocence. Still, these are emotionally potent narratives because the marketplace rewards vulnerability, not reasoning.
This pattern of selection and reward parallels the emotional logic of populism. Followers of political figures often identify with leaders not because they share material circumstances or policy interests but because they recognize themselves in the emotional posture the leader performs.This is evident in the movement surrounding Donald Trump. His supporters do not mimic his ideas; they mimic his emotional volatility, his sense of grievance, and his theatrical defiance.He becomes a projection surface for the emotional life of the crowd. In return, he mirrors their turbulence. This is mimicry in both directions.
The convergence between media dynamics and populist dynamics is not accidental. Both rely on the same grammar: emotional resonance as a substitute for coherence. Trump’s appeal depends on this alignment between emotional expression and public response. The press amplifies his volatility because it generates spectacle; the public interprets the spectacle as authenticity; and authenticity is misread as truth. What appears most authentic is often least reliable as a guide to truth. The cycle continues because repetition and amplification do not depend on coherence. Indeed, incoherence strengthens the bond, because it signals freedom from the constraints of disciplined thought—constraints that many interpret as elitist or oppressive.
This grammar does not operate only in politics. It shapes cultural life more broadly. Cultural production increasingly privileges emotional exposure over disciplined expression. Works are evaluated on the basis of how effectively they simulate immediate sentiment, not on how clearly they illuminate experience. The result is a narrowing of public imagination: nuance becomes difficult to sustain, and reflection is displaced by emotive shorthand. This environment favors individuals who narrate their emotions vividly, regardless of whether their interpretations withstand scrutiny.
The consequences for civic life are considerable. When emotional mimicry becomes the dominant mode of engagement, disagreement becomes impossible to navigate. Individuals no longer encounter differences in judgment; they encounter differences in emotional identity. To critique an argument becomes an attack on the person’s emotional legitimacy. Public conversation becomes a contest of grievances rather than an exchange of ideas. The result is a brittle social sphere in which the loudest emotional frequency defines the terms of debate.
This shift also erodes the distinction between witness and participant. By seeking emotional stories, the press becomes a participant in the very dynamics it reports. It reinforces the emotional scripts people already inhabit. It privileges personal turmoil as evidence of moral depth. It treats spectacle as substance. In doing so, it trains the public to internalize emotional performance as the primary mode of communication. The media does not merely reflect emotional mimicry; it makes it a habitual form of expression.
Today’s emotional grammar differs in scale and function. Selection, repetition, and amplification now operate continuously, reducing complex experience to a narrow range of signals—grievance, resentment, and confession. As these signals circulate, attention is captured by intensity rather than guided by coherence. This is not a moral collapse; it is a failure in how attention is directed and sustained in public life.
The challenge is not to suppress emotion but to restore proportion. Emotional life is essential to human experience, but it cannot serve as a universal grammar for public reasoning. A culture that communicates primarily through emotional mimicry loses its ability to distinguish perception from projection. It becomes reactive rather than reflective. To recover clarity, we must once again separate the vividness of emotion from the validity of thought. Only then can public life recover the depth it has traded for resonance.
*
Ricardo F Morín, November, 2025, Oakland Park, Florida
“Geometric Allegory” digital painting 2023 by Ricardo Morin (American visual artist born in Venezuela–1954)
*
Author’s Note
This installment continues Chapter XII, “The Fourth Sign,” following the initial discussion of Autocracy (§§ 1–9). It focuses on Venezuela, examining §§ 10–25 in which the earlier framework is applied to a specific national case. The chapter concludes in a separate installment devoted to The Asymmetry of Sanctions (§§ 26–34).
Ricardo F. Morín, December 26, 2025, Oakland Park, Florida.
*
Chapter XII: Part 2
*
Venezuela
*
10
To grasp the practical implications of autocracy and its concentration of power, I defer to Rafael Arráiz Lucca’s book, Venezuela:1830 a nuestros días:Breve historia política [2016]. Here, Arráiz Lucca provides a comprehensive history of Venezuela from independence to today.[1]He covers political, economic, and social changes that have shaped the nation. He explores early struggles and the rise of military strongmen, and has treated Hugo Chávez’s rise to power, his ideology, and the effects of his policies on society. He has also examined the continuing influence of Chávez under Nicolás Maduro. In his view, both Chávez and Maduro have exemplified regimes that have centralized power and suppressed dissent.
11
The country’s political trajectory has been profoundly shaped by its enduring history of military rule. Since independence in 1811, twenty-fivemilitary officers have held the presidency, presided over 172 years of governance, and entrenched the military’s influence in the nation’s political fabric. [2] The transition to representative democracy in 1961 marked a significant shift, which ushered in thirty-eight-years of civilian-led stability under the Punto Fijo Pact (see Chapter XI). This civilian era, however, was not free from upheaval. The 1989 Caracazo riots, coupled with the failed coup attempt by Hugo Chávez in 1992, revealed the fragility of civilian democracy and the lingering appeal of military leadership in moments of crisis. [3][4]
12
The Caracazo riots and the subsequent repression had laid bare deep societal fractures that undermined confidence in civilian governance. For many, the chaos and disillusionment rekindled the perception of the military as a force of order and stability, a perception rooted in the nation’s long history of caudillo leadership. Chávez’s rise can be understood as a direct outgrowth of this historical legacy: a charismatic military figure presenting himself as the answer to the failures of civilian politics. The violent repression following the riots, coupled with the systemic inability to address the economic and social inequities they symbolized, paved the way for a return to autocratic tendencies, cloaked in populist rhetoric. This marked the beginning of a new authoritarian era, shaped not only by the fractures of the present but also by the shadows of the past.
13
The presidency of Hugo Chávez continued the tradition of authoritarianism that had been seen earlier during the regime of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez.[5] As in the era of Pérez Jiménez, Chávez relied on oil to finance his policies. [6]
14
For Hugo Chávez, “participatory democracy” aimed at empowering marginalized groups. He created community councils and social missions, which became instruments of his political control—the so-called Bolivarian ideology. Participation therein hinged on one’s loyalty to Chávez, which ultimately led to the marginalization of people opposed to his policies. His blend of populism and authoritarianism framed dissent as being unpatriotic and thus hindered national progress. This approach enabled him to undervalue the power of law; the legislative and judicial branches of government became dependent on the executive.
15
With the endorsement of Nicolás Maduro by Hugo Chávez in 2012, the country slid further into authoritarianism. [7] Opposition parties such as Vente Venezuela, Primero de Justicia, Un Nuevo Tiempo, and Voluntad Popular accused Chávez and Maduro of manipulating the Consejo Nacional Electoral. [8][9][10][11][12]
16
After the death of Chávez, Maduro faced similar accusations in the 2013 and 2018 elections. The Organization of American States, the Lima Group, the International Contact Group, and the Group of Seven concurred.[13][14][15] Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also questioned his legitimacy. [16][17] One exception is the United Nations’ Security Council debate (press release SC/13719), which urged Venezuelans to resolve their crisis internally. [18][19]
17
Following Venezuela’s 2016 suspension from Mercosur, Latin American responses varied and then changed as political administrations changed. [20][21] Initially, Argentina favored the measures by the Organization of American States to apply diplomatic pressure on Venezuela and sought to address the political and humanitarian crises there. [22] It also recognized Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president, though in 2019, it changed and became an advocate for mediation. At first, Brazil recognized Guaidó and was for sanctions against the Venezuelan government, and then in 2023 asked for mediation. [23] Between 2018–22, Colombia accused the Maduro regime of drug trafficking and of giving support to the guerrilla groups, the National Liberation Army and the Revolutionary Armed Forces; Colombia broke diplomatic relations. [24] Later, in 2022, a new administration reopened diplomatic ties and promoted non-intervention. Chile has consistently urged sanctions against Maduro’s government, and even referred Venezuela to the International Criminal Court (ICC). [25][26] Peru expelled Venezuela’s ambassador: The immediate trigger for the expulsion was Venezuela’s Tribunal Supremo de Justicia’s move to dissolve the opposition-controlled Asamblea Nacional, which Peru saw as a step toward authoritarian control. [27] As all other members of the Lima Group did, Peru regularized the status of Venezuelan migrants. In the beginning, Mexico condemned the human rights abuses in Venezuela and called for the release of all political prisoners, but, in 2018, it shifted to a non-interventional approach and in 2022 offered mediation as the only recourse. [28][29][30]
18
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, opposition leader María Corina Machado was disqualified after having won her coalition’s primary. [31] The Tribunal Supremo de Justicia based its decision on her alleged support of U.S. sanctions, supposed corruption, and accusations holding her responsible for losses related to the American subsidiary Citgo of the Venezuelan State-owned oil and natural gas company: Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). Machado’s denial of access to the allegations against her was a blatant violation of due process. Her disqualification left Edmundo González Urrutiaas the unified opposition candidate. [32]
19
Both campaigns engaged in tactics of intimidation. González’s coalition deployed 200,000 observers across 16,000 voting centers and Maduro’s administration intensified media censorship and repression. After Maduro declared victory, protests resulted in extrajudicial killings, arrests, and crackdowns on independent media. [33]
20
González’s coalition collaborated with international observers, including the Organization of American States, the European Union Electoral Observation Mission, the Carter Center, and the United States Mission to the United Nations, to monitor irregularities. [34][35][36][37] The government, however, withheld disaggregated voting data critical for audits—supposedly because the data had been hacked—and imposed travel restrictions on foreign observers. [38] The Carter Center criticized the elections for failing to meet international standards of transparency, fairness, and impartiality. [39]
21
Maduro accused both Machado and González of having incited unrest and announced investigations into the crimes of “usurpation of functions” and “military insurrection,” each carrying thirty-year prison sentences. On August 8, 2024, González left for Spain after the government had granted him safe passage.
22
To understand Venezuela’s political and institutional landscape, one must examine how global indices assess the state of its democracy. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, the Freedom House’s Global Freedom Index, and the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index all provide distinct metrics illuminating Venezuela’s democratic decline under Nicolás Maduro.
23
The Democracy Index ranks countries with higher scores as more democratic. Freedom House and Transparency International diverge from this by using lower scores to indicate worse outcomes, with lower numbers signifying less freedom and higher corruption.
24
In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, Venezuela ranked as the least democratic country in South America in 2008; in 2022, it ranked 147th out of a total of 167 countries. [40] Likewise, in 2023, Freedom House’s Global Freedom Index finds that Venezuela scored low both as a democracy and high corruption, while in its CorruptionPerceptions Index Venezuela scored 13 out of 100 and was positioned as one of the most corrupt nations globally. [41]
25
Additionally, a report by Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for the period from 2012 to 2023 has highlighted the severe corruption to be found in Venezuela. [42] In its 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index, out of 180 countries, Venezuela received a score of 13 out of 100, ranking 177th. These indicators present a clear picture of Venezuelan authoritarianism and of the deterioration of its political landscape in recent years.
~
Endnotes
§ 10
[1]Rafael Arráiz Lucca, Venezuela: 1830 a nuestros días: Breve historia política. (Caracas: Editorial Alfa, 2016), 15-151, 212-37.
[3]The Punto Fijo Pact was a political agreement signed by the three predominant political parties—Acción Democrática (AD), Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente (COPEI), and Unión Republicana Democrática (URD)—at the residence of Rafael Caldera (COPEI): Punto Fijo. The pact aimed to stabilize the country after the fall of dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez [1952-1958] by ensuring democratic alternation of power, institutional continuity, and preventing single-party rule. While it contributed to political stability and a peaceful transition to democracy, critics argue that it also entrenched elite dominance, marginalized smaller parties, and fostered systemic corruption. As a foundational element in Venezuela’s post-dictatorship political landscape, the agreement shaped the nation’s governance for decades. Its legacy, however, is marked by political divisions, as the pact’s structure increasingly excluded some groups and led to dissatisfaction among factions. This period reflects both the challenges and achievements of Venezuela’s efforts to establish a stable and inclusive democracy.
[5]Fredy Rincón Noriega,El Nuevo Ideal Nacional y los planes Económicos- Militares de Pérez Jiménez 1952-1957(Caracas: Ediciones Centauro, 1981)–Kindle Edition
Judith Ewell,The Indictment of a Dictator: The Extradition and Trial of Marcos Perez (College Station: A&M University Press, 1981).
[6] Both leaders have employed centralized power and state control over resources, though their approaches differed. Pérez Jiménez emphasized technocratic and infrastructural development. His policies, as outlined in the Nuevo Ideal Nacional, focused on large-scale construction projects and urban modernization. These initiatives promoted economic growth, but their benefit was directed towards the middle and upper classes. Chávez, on the other hand, pursued a blend of populism and socialism aimed at redistributing oil wealth through extensive social programs for the poor. These policies increased the State’s dependence on oil revenues and left the country vulnerable to market fluctuations.
§ 15
[7]Margarita López Maya, “The Venezuelan Caracazo of 1989 : Popular
Javier Corrales, “Chapter 12: Venezuela’s Autocratization, 1999-2021: Variations in Temporalities, Party Systems, and Institutional Controls.”PDF extracted from Archon Fung, et al, When Democracy Breaks: Studies in Democratic Erosion and Collapse,from Ancient Athens to the Present Day (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023). https://tobinproject.org/sites/default/files/assets/Chapter%2012%20-%20Venezuela%20-%20Corrales.pdf
[12] The Consejo Nacional Electoral, responsible for overseeing elections in Venezuela, has faced long-standing accusations of partisanship and favoritism. Opposition groups (Vente Venezuela, Primero de Justicia, Un Nuevo Tiempo, Voluntad Popular) have alleged that Chávez and Maduro appointed to it only members who favored the ruling party. For an analysis of the Consejo Nacional Electoral’s role in reinforcing authoritarianism, see Javier Corrales: Autocracy Rising:How Venezuela Transitioned to Authoritarianism (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2023), 3, 28. Also see Jennifer L. McCoy and David J. Myers, The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 276-80, 293-96.
§ 16
[13] The Lima Group, formed in August 2017, includes: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Guyana, and St. Lucia.
[14] The International Contact Group (the European Union, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Uruguay) advocates for credible elections and have voiced concerns about the Consejo Nacional Electoral’s impartiality.
[15]Group of Seven (G7)–Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States–has condemned electoral irregularities in Venezuela and called for independent oversight. Allegations of voter registration manipulation by the Consejo Nacional Electoral, has heightened suspicions of vote tampering.
[18]“Venezuelans Must Resolve Crisis Themselves, Security Council Delegates Agree while Differing over Legitimacy of Contending Parties. Briefing on Weekend Incidents Biased, Says Foreign Minister as Speakers for United States, Russian Federation Exchange Barbs,” United Nations: Meetings Coverage and Press Releases, 8472nd Meeting, SC/13719, February 26, 2019. https://press.un.org/en/2019/sc13719.doc.htm
[19] In February 2019, a United Nations Security Council Report debated whether to supervise elections or mediate between Maduro’s government and the opposition. Ultimately, the Council upheld a non-interventionist approach while offering to mediate.
[21]Mercosur (acronym for the Mercado Común del Sur or the Southern Common Market) is a regional trade bloc founded in 1991 by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay (it later included Chile). Mercosur’s mission is to promote economic integration and free trade.
[30].- Mexico has mediated between Nicolás Maduro’s government and the opposition after the July 28, 2024 presidential election results, with support from Brazil and Colombia.
[38].- Disaggregated election results enhance transparency by enabling cross-checking against aggregated totals. This method reveals potential errors, facilitates audits, and highlights regional irregularities, strengthening the legitimacy of electoral outcomes.
Modern societies describe progress through a vocabulary of invention and expansion. Yet the consequences often observed in economic life arise from institutional arrangements that precede the innovations themselves.
New technologies appear as discoveries; markets appear as opportunities; growth appears as the natural result of human ingenuity. This language creates an image of development that emphasizes creativity while it conceals a more durable structure beneath it. Governments, legal authorities, and commercial institutions rarely begin systems of economic growth with invention alone. They begin when institutions convert conditions that once belonged to shared human life into resources that can be owned, measured, and exchanged.
Land becomes property; labor becomes wage labor; knowledge becomes data. Rivers that once supplied water freely to surrounding communities now appear in financial markets as tradable assets. Each transformation enlarges the field of economic activity because it reorganizes what was previously common. The narrative of progress celebrates the innovation that follows this conversion; yet the expansion often depends first on the extraction that made the innovation possible. Economic development therefore unfolds through a recurring institutional act: the conversion of shared conditions into organized systems of ownership.
2
The first large transformation occurred when land and labor entered modern economic systems as commodities. Earlier societies cultivated land and organized work through local obligations, customary rights, and communal practices. Modern economies introduced a different arrangement. Legal systems defined land as transferable property; this definition allowed estates, plantations, and industrial sites to circulate within markets.
Industrial production also required a stable supply of labor that could be measured and compensated in monetary terms. Wage contracts fulfilled that requirement. Workers exchanged hours of effort for income; employers calculated production through predictable units of labor.
This institutional reorganization created the foundation of industrial growth. Factories and commercial agriculture did not rely only on machinery; they relied on legal and economic systems that converted land and labor into inputs capable of sustaining continuous production. The Industrial Revolution therefore expanded not only through invention but also through the systematic reorganization of human and natural resources into economic instruments.
3
Industrial expansion soon demanded resources that extended beyond land and labor alone. Factories required concentrated sources of power capable of sustaining mechanical production on a large scale. Coal supplied the first solution; petroleum followed with even greater efficiency.
Extraction industries emerged to supply these fuels. Mining companies developed technologies that could remove coal from deep geological layers; oil firms drilled wells that reached reservoirs beneath land and sea. Railways, pipelines, and shipping routes connected these extraction sites to industrial centers.
Governments and corporations secured access to these resources through territorial agreements, drilling concessions, and strategic alliances that protected shipping routes and energy infrastructure. Industrial powers negotiated drilling rights and controlled shipping corridors that carried fuel across oceans to factories and cities. These arrangements tied distant territories to the energy demands of expanding industrial societies. Energy became the substance that sustained industrial economies; control of energy flows became a measure of geopolitical influence. Economic expansion therefore depended not only on technical invention but also on the ability of States to organize and protect systems of resource extraction across national boundaries.
4
The late twentieth century introduced a transformation that appeared to depart from this material pattern. Digital networks created environments where human activity could be recorded, stored, and analyzed. Companies that operated these networks soon recognized that the information generated through everyday interaction possessed economic value.
Search queries, online purchases, social exchanges, location signals, and browsing histories formed detailed records of behavior. Digital platforms developed algorithms that could process these records and identify patterns within them. Advertising systems used those patterns to match products with likely consumers; businesses purchased access to those predictions because they sought to increase sales.
Individuals who search for information, communicate with friends, or move through cities rarely perceive that these ordinary actions generate the data streams that sustain digital markets. These systems appear impersonal, yet they remain human constructions. Engineers design the platforms, legislators authorize the legal frameworks that permit data collection, and investors finance the infrastructure that organizes this information into profit. The authority of the system therefore rests on decisions made by identifiable actors who participate in its operation. Human behavior becomes a measurable resource within the digital economy, and everyday activity enters systems of calculation that transform ordinary experience into economic input.
5
Artificial intelligence extends this informational system into a new domain. Machine learning systems require vast collections of language, images, and recorded activity. Developers assemble these materials through large data sets that gather written expression, visual material, and behavioral traces from many sources.
Newspapers, books, photographs, academic research, and online conversations become training material for these systems. Computational processes analyze these materials and adjust internal parameters until recognizable patterns of language or perception emerge. The resulting models appear to generate knowledge independently; yet their structure depends on the human expressions that formed the training material.
Collective intellectual activity therefore becomes the substance from which artificial intelligence systems derive their capabilities. Firms that control these systems own the architecture through which this knowledge becomes computational intelligence. Human creativity remains the origin; proprietary systems govern access to the resulting capabilities.
6
The apparent immateriality of this digital environment conceals a substantial physical foundation. Computation requires hardware that conducts electricity, stores information, and performs complex calculations. These devices depend on minerals extracted from the earth.
Copper carries electrical current through circuits and transmission lines. Lithium and cobalt stabilize batteries that power portable systems. Rare earth elements create magnets that operate within turbines and electronic components. Silicon forms the basis of semiconductor fabrication.
Mining operations extract these materials from geological deposits; refining facilities separate and process them into usable forms; manufacturing plants assemble them into processors, memory systems, and data centers. The digital economy therefore rests on a chain of material production that extends from mineral extraction to computational infrastructure.
States compete intensely within this system because control of mineral supply chains influences technological capacity. Countries rich in copper, lithium, and rare earth elements negotiate new partnerships with industrial powers that require these materials. Technological development therefore reconnects digital innovation with the geopolitical realities of resource extraction.
7
Systems built on extraction rarely present themselves through that language. Advocates of each technological era often describe development as an inevitable progression that no society can alter. Industrialization carried that description; petroleum dependence carried it as well; digital expansion repeated the same claim. Phrases such as “the digital future cannot be stopped” or “artificial intelligence will transform everything” present technological systems as unavoidable outcomes.
This description performs an important function. When a system appears inevitable, criticism of its structure loses urgency. Public discussion shifts from examining how institutions organize resources toward adjusting to the system those institutions have already created.
Citizens repeat these expressions in public discussion and private conversation; by doing so they reinforce the appearance that technological systems operate beyond human choice. This repetition relieves individuals of the burden of questioning the structures that govern economic life and allows systems of extraction to continue without sustained scrutiny. Yet technological systems do not arise independently of political decision. Governments establish property rights, regulate industries, and authorize investment structures. Firms design platforms, infrastructure, and markets that channel resources into systems of production. The narrative of inevitability obscures these arrangements. It encourages societies to accept technological systems as natural developments rather than as institutions shaped by deliberate choices.
8
The historical sequence reveals a recurring pattern. Each stage of modern growth identifies conditions of life that institutions can reorganize into economic resources. Land, labor, energy, information, and knowledge have entered this sequence in successive eras.
These resources originate within the shared environment of human society and the natural world. Communities cultivate land; workers apply skill and effort; generations contribute knowledge and expression. Economic institutions establish mechanisms that reorganize these shared conditions into systems of ownership. Property law assigns control over land; industrial infrastructure organizes labor and energy; digital platforms collect behavioral information; computational systems assemble human knowledge into proprietary models.
The tension within this process becomes visible when the resource cannot plausibly be described as private in origin. Water offers the clearest example. No individual produces it, and every society depends on it. Yet financial and legal systems increasingly treat access to water as an asset that can be owned, traded, or controlled through investment structures. When institutions transform a resource so obviously common into a vehicle of ownership, the separation between origin and control becomes unmistakable.
Economic institutions do not operate apart from political authority. States establish the legal frameworks that transform common resources into systems of ownership and production. Through those frameworks, governments grant access to land, energy, information, and technological infrastructure. These arrangements generate wealth for firms and investors who operate within them; they also strengthen the strategic position of the States that oversee those systems.
Political communities therefore confront a difficult responsibility. They must decide whether the resources that sustain collective life remain subject to public authority or become instruments of concentrated ownership.
Governments often treat common resources not only as foundations of economic activity but also as instruments of geopolitical advantage. Rival States compete to secure control over these resources and the industries that depend on them. Ideological disputes accompany this competition; yet the underlying structure remains similar across competing systems. Prosperity and influence arise from institutions that convert common resources into concentrated forms of wealth and authority.
Modern societies continue to pursue innovation and expansion; the history of their development shows that growth has repeatedly depended on this conversion. Progress expands production and knowledge; yet it often detaches ownership from the common resources that made that expansion possible. The enduring question is whether societies can pursue advancement while maintaining alignment between the resources that belong to all and the systems that govern their use.
*
Ricardo F. Morín, March 10, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida.
Ricardo F. Morín Infinity 32 13 “ x 15 ¾” Oil on linen 2009
Religious belief and democratic life often meet within diverse societies where traditions, rituals, and outward identities differ, even as individuals share deeper ethical concerns. People turn to religion for meaning and conscience, while democratic life asks them to live alongside others whose practices and expressions vary. Tension becomes visible when superficial distinctions shape perception more than shared ethical ground, and when claims of moral authority seek to govern the shared civic space of others.
Plurality is a constant feature of democratic life. Individuals speak, listen, and respond in public meetings, civic gatherings, online exchanges, and everyday encounters where limits and freedom of expression meet. Expression that invites response, allows disagreement, or makes room for reconsideration can sustain coexistence, while expression framed as accusation, exclusion, or moral finality can narrow it. Political life adjusts to shifting advantage and immediate circumstance, while religious conscience often draws individuals toward standards held to endure across conflicts. Individuals move between these two demands, rarely able to resolve the tension between them. Religious and political judgment can align while remaining open to disagreement, even as individuals draw from moral frameworks that shape their conduct and traditions.
Religious expression often appears in public life through appeals to fairness, responsibility, and the dignity of persons. Such expressions shape how individuals frame their claims without requiring agreement on doctrine. When religious language enters public conversation as part of a shared ethical vocabulary, it can widen recognition without demanding uniform belief. People may not agree on belief, yet they may recognize common ground in the use of moral language. At times, religious communities identify ethical similarities across traditions, allowing plurality to remain workable within that recognition. When partisan pressures reframe difference as threat, markers such as creed, race, or culture become dividing lines, and shared ground recedes from view.
Difficulty emerges when religious identity becomes inseparable from partisan alignment and when public language becomes structured around accusation rather than mutual examination of ideas. Under such conditions, freedom of expression is interpreted less as civic difference and more as personal rejection. Expression itself is treated as evidence of allegiance rather than as an invitation to examination.
Another condition appears when citizens continue to recognize one another as legitimate participants despite differences that remain unresolved. Religious conviction shapes conscience, while democratic life maintains a space in which competing claims can exist without coercion. Individuals move between these spheres, sometimes comfortably and sometimes with strain, as they adjust boundaries, widen or narrow participation, and renegotiate coexistence over time.
People continue to move between religious conviction and democratic participation without resolving the tension between them. Some draw boundaries more firmly; others widen the space for coexistence, and many shift between both over time. The tension remains visible not as a problem to eliminate, but as part of how individuals understand themselves, claim authority, and live alongside others within a shared civic world.
*
Ricardo F. Morín, February 16, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida
Ricardo Morin Silence III 22’ x 30” Watercolor, graphite, gesso, acrylic on paper 2010
Rethinking Identity and Entitlement in Civic Life
The phrase “my people” draws lines. It signals allegiance before argument begins. It may express familiarity, shared memory, or recognition. Yet the same words separate one group from another. A boundary forms, often without intention. Those inside feel affirmed; those outside may feel unseen.
Such moments rarely begin as acts of exclusion. They arise from ordinary human impulses: the desire to protect what feels familiar, to defend what has been wounded, or to claim space where one has felt overlooked. But when identity becomes the primary language through which claims are made, conversations change. Disagreement becomes personal. Listening becomes strategic. The space where people meet as equals contracts.
Group identity has long provided people with strength and protection. It helps individuals recover dignity when they feel ignored or misunderstood, and it offers language through which shared experiences can be recognized. Yet the same force can also narrow perception. When group identity becomes the main lens through which people judge one another, ideas are weighed less on their merit and more on the speaker’s affiliation.
When ideas begin to be judged primarily through identity rather than merit, the change is often subtle. An exchange that begins openly can become defensive as participants look for signs of alignment or opposition. Words are weighed for allegiance. Questions are interpreted as challenges rather than invitations to examine ideas together. Over time, dialogue shifts from exploration toward defense of positions. Judgment shifts from the merit of an idea to the standing of the speaker.
Many people carry an expectation into public life that they will be treated consistently. Uneven rules are recognized quickly. When identity determines whose voice counts before ideas are heard, trust weakens not only among those excluded, but also among those unsure whether they are seen as individuals or as representatives of a category.
Problems deepen when identity stops being one part of a person’s experience and begins to overshadow all others. Public debate narrows. Arguments are interpreted as attacks on identity rather than disagreements over ideas. People feel compelled to defend positions not because they are persuaded by them, but because reconsidering publicly may be treated as betrayal. The result is not stronger community, but increasing rigidity, where listening carries risk and reconsideration feels unsafe.
People turn toward simplification and absolutism to reduce uncertainty and relieve the strain of complexity. This tendency does not permanently define human interaction; it marks moments when ambiguity feels intolerable and certainty appears easier to sustain. Certainty offers relief, but it reduces the space in which plurality can endure. The tension itself does not disappear; only the way people attempt to manage it changes.
Contemporary communication technologies accelerate the circulation and visibility of opinion. Expressions that promise certainty or provoke fear travel farther and faster; expressions that sustain ambiguity move more slowly. This circulation amplifies tendencies toward simplification, reinforcing what attracts attention rather than what withstands examination.
When identity becomes the basis for deciding who others are before dialogue takes shape, examination gives way to labeling. Nuance is set aside. Individuals become symbols of larger struggles, and ordinary encounters carry the weight of broader conflicts. Under these conditions, disagreement resembles confrontation even when intentions remain sincere.
Public life rests on an expectation that the same rules apply to all. Uneven application becomes visible when some voices are heard more readily than others or when identity determines credibility before ideas are considered. Under these conditions, conversation shifts from exchange toward competition for recognition, and the possibility of shared judgment becomes more difficult to sustain.
The tension does not belong to one group alone; this situation affects everyone who participates in public life. Each person seeks recognition while fearing misinterpretation. Attempts to resolve disagreement through persuasion alone often reach limits beyond individual control. Listening, under these conditions, does not erase distance but allows interaction to continue despite it.
Differences remain, and disagreement persists. The lines that divide do not disappear; they shift, harden, or soften as people respond to one another in ordinary encounters. Living together does not remove tension; living together reveals tension. No shared answer resolves the matter. Each person must decide how to respond and how to live alongside others within limits no one fully controls.
*
Ricardo F. Morín, February 15, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida.
Ricardo F. Morín New York Series, Nº 11 54″ x 84″ Oil on canvas 1989
The work began within a relationship marked by companionship and solidarity. Attention to language, discipline, and restraint developed through shared effort rather than assertion of authority. Standards were learned through proximity, conversation, and time. Whatever shape the writing later assumed did not arise in isolation; it took form within sustained exchange oriented toward craft.
For a time, that arrangement held. Growth moved in a common direction. Guidance clarified rather than constrained. Correction sharpened rather than narrowed. At that stage, there was no reason to imagine that continuation would require anything other than more work.
As the writing developed, friction appeared without a clear source. Questions emerged that did not settle easily. Revisions accumulated without resolving what they were meant to address. What had once felt like refinement began to feel like adjustment, though the difference was not immediately clear. The work continued, but with more hesitation.
Gratitude complicated recognition. What had been received was evident and could not be denied. To question the present form of the relation felt premature, even ungrateful. Endurance seemed preferable to interruption, especially while uncertainty could still be explained as part of growth.
Over time, small signs accumulated. Decisions were postponed. Directions shifted after agreement. Suggestions were acknowledged but returned unchanged. The writing slowed. Nothing dramatic occurred, but progress no longer felt proportionate to effort.
Attempts were made to restore balance. Clarifications were offered. Adjustments were accepted. The hope was that refinement of terms might recover the earlier ease of movement. Instead, the same tension reappeared, differently framed, without resolving what had prompted it.
At a certain point, the difficulty could no longer be treated as temporary. Continuing began to require forms of accommodation that altered how judgment operated while writing. Choices were made to preserve the relation rather than the work. What was being protected became harder to name.
Recognition did not arrive as certainty. It arrived as a limit. There were things the work could no longer do without distortion. There were directions it could no longer take without resistance that did not diminish over time.
Rupture followed hesitation, delay, and resistance. It did not resolve anything cleanly. It ended a form of continuity that had once been formative. What was relinquished was not gratitude, but dependence. What remained was the work itself, now proceeding without mediation.
The cost of rupture was not conflict, but exposure. Standards had to be held without reinforcement. Decisions could no longer be deferred. Failure, if it came, would no longer be shared.
Nothing in the rupture erased what had been learned. It marked the point at which learning could no longer continue in the same form. What followed was not freedom in the abstract, but authorship in the strict sense: judgment carried without shelter.
*
Ricardo F Morín, January 1, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida.
Ricardo F. Morín Irrationality, Propaganda, and Tribalism CGI 2026
1. A political claim ordinarily enters public life through institutions. A law is debated, enacted, interpreted, contested. A speech is delivered from a known office, before a defined audience, subject to reply and record. Authority, in these cases, arises from responsibility and constraint.
2. The text examined here satisfies none of these conditions.
3. The text attributes to an unnamed broadcast the power to alter legal status. The text presents a speaker not as a citizen who speaks, but as a conscience that pronounces. The text declares effects that no statute, no executive order, and no court possesses the authority to produce. The text announces national assent in the absence of any forum capable of granting assent.
4. No enactment appears. No interpretation occurs. No review is possible.
5. Nothing in this sequence is argued. Nothing in this sequence is demonstrated. Nothing in this sequence is capable of verification.
6. Authority is not derived from office, law, or responsibility. Authority is assigned by narrative arrangement.
7. The speaker is granted moral standing by recognition alone. The law is displaced by spectacle. The audience is positioned as witness to a verdict that precedes deliberation. Silence is treated as confirmation. Stillness is treated as consent.
8. What appears as denunciation functions as substitution.
9. The place of institutions is occupied by a voice. The place of argument is occupied by proclamation. The place of judgment is occupied by reaction.
10. The result is not persuasion. The result is conversion.
11. Citizens are not addressed as agents capable of contesting claims. Citizens are addressed as spectators invited to receive a moral scene whose meaning has been fixed in advance.
12. When invented testimony is received as political record, the boundary between event and wish disappears. When spectacle is treated as verdict, correction loses authority. When conscience is produced as performance, no institution remains capable of constraining conscience.
13. This is not misinformation in the ordinary sense.
14. This phenomenon is the replacement of judgment by fabricated authority.
15. Authority ordinarily attaches to an office before authority attaches to a voice, because office supplies the limits under which speech can claim consequence. A court exists, so a judge speaks. A chamber exists, so a legislator speaks. An administration exists, so an executive speaks. In each case standing precedes utterance, and the public can locate responsibility by locating the forum in which the claim is made.
16. The text examined here reverses that order. The text presents a voice whose standing is not grounded in any office that can be named, any jurisdiction that can be defined, or any forum that can be recognized. No delegation is stated. No mandate is visible. No responsibility is assumed. Yet the voice speaks as if entitled to pronounce on matters whose force depends, in ordinary civic life, on enactment, interpretation, and review.
17. This reversal matters because office establishes the scope under which a claim may operate, jurisdiction fixes the reach of effects, and procedure subjects both scope and reach to contest and record. A claim that arises through these constraints can be challenged because standing can be challenged. The claim here does not arise through constraint; the claim arises through reception. Standing depends on recognition rather than jurisdiction, and recognition is not a civic category that admits examination.
18. One can dispute a mandate. One can deny a court’s jurisdiction. One can invoke procedure and require reply. Recognition offers no equivalent instrument. Recognition confers authority without specifying scope, and recognition allows a voice to present itself as conscience without accepting the obligations that make conscience accountable in public life.
19. The effect is not merely that a voice speaks outside office. The effect is that the role of office is replaced. In a system where standing precedes speech, speech can be limited because the forum can be limited. In a system where standing follows speech, speech expands until something external imposes a boundary.
20. The text relies on no such boundary. The text presents moral standing as complete at the moment of utterance, and the text treats reception as confirmation. The audience is positioned less as a public capable of contest than as a witness to a pronouncement whose authority is presumed rather than earned.
21. In that arrangement the claim to speak carries consequence without jurisdiction, and authority appears where no institution can be identified as a source of authority.
22. Authority that does not arise from office cannot rely on procedure. Procedure requires forum. Forum requires jurisdiction. Jurisdiction requires mandate. None is present here.
23. The claim therefore does not proceed by sequence. The claim proceeds without premises, without grounds, and without anticipation of reply. The statement does not argue. The statement announces.
24. What would ordinarily require enactment is declared complete. What would ordinarily require interpretation is pronounced settled. What would ordinarily require review is presented as final. Verdict precedes forum.
25. This reversal alters the function of speech itself. Speech no longer seeks assent through reasoning. Speech produces assent by declaration. Judgment no longer follows deliberation. Judgment is installed before deliberation can occur.
26. Once proclamation is received as verdict, proof becomes irrelevant.
27. Once argument is removed from the sequence, assent no longer arises from judgment. Assent arises from recognition. The claim does not ask to be examined. The claim asks to be received. The force of the claim depends less on what the claim establishes than on whom the claim addresses.
28. The audience is not invited to consider whether the verdict follows from law, or whether the authority invoked possesses standing to pronounce. The audience is invited to recognize the audience in the verdict.
29. This shift alters the function of agreement. In deliberative settings, assent follows contest. One accepts a conclusion because one has weighed a claim against alternatives. Here, assent precedes any such weighing. The verdict arrives already formed, and reception supplies confirmation.
30. Agreement no longer signals conviction, but affiliation, a posture defined less by conviction than by position.
31. Recognition, in this arrangement, performs the work that argument once performed. To accept the claim is to affirm membership in a moral position already defined. The verdict does not bind because the verdict is correct. The verdict binds because the verdict identifies.
32. Those who receive the verdict do not do so as judges of coherence, but as participants in the posture the verdict confers. The claim succeeds not by persuading opponents, but by consolidating those already disposed to accept the claim.
33. This function explains the absence of procedure. Deliberation would introduce fracture. Contest would introduce differentiation. Review would expose divergence. None serves the purpose at hand.
34. The claim therefore bypasses every stage at which disagreement could appear. The claim offers instead a completed judgment whose primary effect is to sort recognition from refusal.
35. The result is not belief in the ordinary sense, but affiliation, a posture defined less by conviction than by position. To assent is to take position within a moral alignment whose boundaries are drawn by reception itself. Those who accept are confirmed. Those who hesitate are marked.
36. Authority, in this form, does not govern through law. Authority governs through identification.
37. Once standing is conferred by reception, the remaining limits cannot hold.
38. Once authority is produced in this manner, substitution becomes unavoidable. In this arrangement office yields to presence, jurisdiction yields to recognition, procedure yields to proclamation, and judgment yields to reaction, until no limit remains capable of arresting the expansion that follows.
39. Each replacement removes a limit. Each replacement widens scope. Each replacement dissolves responsibility.
40. What remains is a form of authority that cannot be contested because no forum remains in which contest can occur.
41. The consequence for citizenship follows directly. A citizen ordinarily participates in judgment by weighing claims, contesting standing, and invoking procedure. Here, that role disappears. The citizen is no longer positioned as a participant in deliberation. The citizen is positioned as a recipient of verdict.
42. Agency yields to reception, judgment yields to alignment, and responsibility yields to loyalty, until disagreement itself can no longer appear as a civic act.
43. In this posture disagreement ceases to be a civic act. Disagreement becomes a breach of affiliation. Hesitation becomes disloyalty. Correction becomes defection.
44. Once judgment is displaced in this way, repair becomes impossible. Correction presupposes a forum. Review presupposes jurisdiction. Reply presupposes standing. None remains available.
45. A verdict that arrives without forum cannot be recalled to contest. An authority that arises without office cannot be subjected to review. A claim that governs through recognition alone cannot be corrected without threatening membership itself.
46. The persistence of fabrication follows not from confusion, but from function. Fabrication endures because fabrication stabilizes alignment. Fabrication circulates because fabrication confirms position. Fabrication resists correction because correction would dissolve the posture fabrication sustains.
47. Authority, once detached from office and constraint, does not disappear. Authority reappears in altered form. Verdict is separated from forum. Conscience is separated from responsibility. Assent is separated from deliberation.
48. What remains is a claim to govern without jurisdiction.
49. This is not the corruption of judgment. This is displacement.
50. Judgment is no longer exercised. Judgment is produced.
*
Ricardo F. Morín, January 21, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida.
“Geometric Allegory,” digital painting 2023 by Ricardo Morin (American visual artist born in Venezuela–1954)
*
To my parents
*
Acknowledgements
~
I wish to acknowledge Billy Bussell Thompson for his meticulous editorial guidance. His feedback sharpened the structure, precision, and internal discipline of this work.
Preface
“Unmasking Disappointment” follows a line of inquiry present throughout my work: the examination of identity, memory, and the relations that emerge when life unfolds across cultural boundaries. Although I have lived outside Venezuela for more than five decades and became a naturalized citizen of the United States twenty-four years ago, my relationship to the country of my birth remains a persistent point of reference. The distance between these conditions—belonging and removal—forms the backdrop against which this narrative takes shape.
This work belongs to a broader autobiographical project that gathers experiences, observations, and questions accumulated over time. While personal in origin, it does not proceed as confession or memoir. Its method is sequential rather than expressive: individual exposure is situated within historical forces and political structures that have shaped Venezuelan life across generations. The intention is not to reconcile these tensions, but to render them visible through recurrence, record, and consequence.
“Series I” introduces the first thematic clusters of this inquiry. The episodes assembled here do not advance a single thesis, nor do they aim at resolution. They trace points of friction where private experience intersects with public power, and where political narratives exert pressure on ordinary life. Across these encounters, patterns emerge—not as abstractions, but as conditions that alter how authority is exercised, how responsibility is displaced, and how agency is constrained.
The chapters that follow examine the pressures produced by systemic inequality and trace contemporary Venezuelan conditions back to their historical formation. Autocratic rule and popular consent appear not as opposing forces, but as elements that increasingly entangle and weaken one another. Within this entanglement, truth does not disappear; it becomes less evenly accessible and more readily displaced by narrative.
When public discourse is shaped by propaganda and misinformation, authoritarian structures gain resilience. Recovering truth under such conditions does not resolve political conflict, but it clarifies the limits within which political life operates. Agency emerges not as an ideal, but as a condition sustained—or undermined—through practice and consequence.
This work does not propose deterministic explanations or simple remedies. It proceeds by accumulation, drawing attention to patterns that persist despite changing circumstances. What it asks of the reader is not agreement, but attention: to evidence, to sequence, and to the conditions under which political freedom may be meaningfully exercised.
Writing from Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I remain aware of the distance between the environments in which this work is composed and the conditions it examines. That distance does not confer authority; it imposes responsibility.
Ricardo Federico Morín Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, January 21, 2025
*
Table of Contents
*
Chapter I – A Written Language.
Chapter II – Our Recklessness.
Chapter III – Point of View.
Chapter IV – A Dialogue.
Chapter V – Abstract.
Chapter VI – Chronicles of Hugo Chávez (§§ I-XVII).
Chapter VII – The Allegorical Mode.
Chapter VIII – The Ideal Government and the Power of Virtue.
Chapter IX – The First Sign: On Political and Social Resentment.
Chapter X – The Second Sign: The Solid Pillar of Power: The Military Forces.
Chapter XI – The Third Sign: The Asymmetry of Political Parties.
Chapter XII – The Fourth Sign: Autocracy (§§ 1-9):Venezuela (§§ 10-23), The Asymmetry of Sanctions (§§ 24-32).
Chapter XIII – The Fifth Sign: The Pawned Republic.
Chapter XIV – The First Issue: Partisanship, Non-partisanship, and Antipartisanship.
Chapter XV – The Second Issue: On Partial Truths and Repressive Anarchy.
Chapter XVI – The Third Issue: The Clarion of Democracy.
Chapter XVII – The Fourth Issue: On Human Rights.
Chapter XVIII – The Fifth Issue: On the Nature of Violence.
Chapter XIX – The Ultimate Issue: About the Deliverance of Injustice.
Acknowledgments.
Epilogue.
PostScript.
Appendix: Author’s Note, Prefatory Note. A). Venezuelan Constitutions [1811-1999], Branches, and Departments of Government. B) Evolution of Political Parties: 1840-2024. C) Laws Enacted by the Asamblea Nacional. D) Clarificatory Note on Domestic Coercion, Foreign Presence, and Intervention.
Bibliography.
~
*
Chapter I
*
A Written Language
~
Stability is often sought where it cannot be secured. Experience has shown this repeatedly. Even careful intentions tend to draw one into uncertain terrain, where understanding lags behind consequence. At the desk, as late-afternoon light reaches the page, writing assumes a practical function: it becomes a means of ordering what would otherwise remain unsettled. The act does not resolve vulnerability, but it records it. Whether time alters such conditions remains uncertain; what can be done is to give them form.
What follows moves from the conditions of writing to the conditions it must confront.
*
Chapter II
*
Our Recklessness
~
“Our painful struggle to deal with the politics of climate change is surely also a product of the strange standoff between science and political thinking.” — Hannah Arendt: The Human Condition: Being and Time [1958], Kindle Book, 159.
*
1
The COVID pandemic and the 2023 Canadian wildfires, among other recent events, have made visible conditions that were already in place. These events did not introduce new vulnerabilities as much as they revealed the extent to which existing systems depend on economic incentives and political habits that privilege extraction over preservation. During the period when smoke from the fires reached the northeastern United States, daylight in parts of Pennsylvania was visibly altered and registered the reach of events unfolding at a considerable distance. Such occurrences do not stand apart from prevailing economic arrangements; they coincide with a model that treats natural conditions as commodities and absorbs their degradation as an external cost.
2
The fires in California in 2025, like those that spread across Canada in 2023, do not present themselves as isolated occurrences. They form part of a sequence shaped by environmental neglect, political inertia, and sustained industrial expansion. Conditions such as desertification, resource scarcity, and population displacement no longer appear solely as projected outcomes; they are increasingly registered as present circumstances. Scientific assessments indicate that these patterns are likely to intensify in the absence of structural change. [1][2][3] What is brought into view, over time, is not a singular failure but a system that continues to operate according to priorities that favor immediate yield over long-term continuity.
3
The question of balance does not arise solely as a technical problem. It emerges within a moral and political field shaped by prevailing economic assumptions. The treatment of nature—and more recently of artificial intelligence—as a commodity reflects a trajectory in which matters of shared survival are increasingly translated into market terms. Under such conditions, considerations that once belonged to collective responsibility are recast as variables within systems of calculation.
4
Such patterns place increasing strain on conditions necessary for collective survival. Responses to these conditions vary and range from indifference to urgency, though urgency does not invariably produce clarity. What becomes apparent, across repeated instances, is a tendency for crisis to recur without sustained adjustment. This recurrence parallels the political histories examined in the chapters that follow, where warning and consequence frequently fail to align.
Conversations with my editor, Billy Bussell Thompson, have accompanied the development of this work over time. His attention to research method and to the structure of argument has contributed to the clarification of its scope and direction. These exchanges, often conducted at a distance and without ceremony, formed part of the process through which the present narrative took shape. After an extended period of uncertainty regarding how to approach the subject of Hugo Chávez, the contours of Unmasking Disappointment gradually emerged.
2
Hugo Chávez entered national political life as a leader whose authority was exercised in opposition to political liberalism.[1] While his public discourse emphasized alignment with the poor, the material benefits of power accumulated within a narrow circle. [2] Over the course of his tenure, democratic institutions in Venezuela experienced progressive weakening, and governance assumed increasingly authoritarian forms. These developments become more legible when situated within the historical record and examined through documented practice rather than rhetorical claim.
3
The events that followed Chávez’s rule are marked by disorder and unresolved consequence. Their persistence draws attention to questions of historical accountability and collective responsibility that remain unsettled. Examining the record of autocratic leadership—its ambitions as well as its failures—provides a means of approaching the problem of justice in Venezuela without presuming resolution. Through this examination, enduring tensions come into view as conditions to be understood rather than conclusions to be reached.
~
Endnotes—Chapter III
[1]The term caudillo originates in Spanish and has historically been used to describe a leader who exercises concentrated political and military authority. In the Venezuelan context, the term carries particular resonance and refers to figures associated with the post-independence period of the nineteenth century. Such leaders tended to consolidate power through a combination of personal authority, allegiance from armed factions, and the promise—whether substantive or rhetorical—of maintaining order under conditions of instability. While some were regarded as defenders of local or national causes, others became associated with practices that facilitated authoritarian governance and weakened institutional structures. The concept of the caudillo continues to function within Venezuelan political culture as a descriptive category applied to leadership forms that combine popular support with concentrated power.
A series of conversations between BBT and the author accompanied the examination of Venezuelan politics and history developed in this section. These exchanges formed a transitional space in which reflection gave way to historical inquiry, allowing questions of interpretation, responsibility, and record to be addressed through dialogue rather than exposition.
1
—RFM: “My writing has been concerned with the evolution of Venezuela’s political landscape, with particular attention to the emergence of authoritarian forms of rule. The focus has been less on abstract doctrine than on how specific policies translated into everyday conditions for ordinary Venezuelans.”
2
—BBT: “Examining how authoritarian leadership shapes political conditions is necessary, though the term itself is often contested and applied unevenly. In Chávez’s case, the use of propaganda was not exceptional in form, but it was consistently employed as an instrument of governance. How did official narratives during his tenure circulate, and what effects did they have on public perception over time?”
3
—RFM: “Propaganda is not unique to Chávez; it functions as a recurring instrument across political systems. In Venezuela, official media regularly attributed economic hardship to external interference rather than to domestic policy decisions. At the same time, material conditions deteriorated, with shortages emerging from economic mismanagement and later compounded by external restrictions. Opposition groups also circulated counter-narratives, which in turn elicited responses from the State. These exchanges unfolded within a historical context shaped by civil conflict and Cold War alignments, and produced a fragmented informational environment. Within that environment, responsibility for economic decline was frequently displaced, while public perception was managed through repetition rather than resolution. The social and economic reforms invoked in justification did not, over time, yield the reductions in poverty and inequality that had been promised.”
4
—BBT: “To render Venezuela’s political conditions with some accuracy, attention must be given to how ordinary citizens encountered these dynamics in daily life. How were such conditions navigated in practice, particularly where political discourse intersected with immediate economic necessity?”
5
—RFM: “The economic collapse that followed the decline of the oil-based model intensified poverty and placed sustained pressure on public services. Examined in sequence, this period shows how colonial legacies and authoritarian practices converged in the formation of Chavismo. Episodes such as the 1989 riots known as El Caracazo registered widespread disaffection with established parties and democratic institutions. Under such conditions, the demands of securing basic necessities frequently outweighed engagement with abstract political principles.”
6
—BBT: “Clarity in narrative depends in part on recognizing the assumptions that guide interpretation. When these assumptions are made explicit and examined, the account becomes less directive and more accessible, allowing readers to follow the record without being steered toward a predetermined position.”
7
—RFM: “No narrative proceeds without interpretation, including this one. Writing provides a means of approaching Venezuela’s history—its colonial formation, episodes of authoritarian rule, and periods of political disruption—without foreclosing alternative readings. A coherent account need not be exhaustive; it remains open insofar as it attends to implication and consequence rather than resolution.”
8
—BBT: “The exchange itself underscores the importance of careful narration when approaching Venezuela’s political and social record. Attending to multiple viewpoints does not resolve complexity, but it allows a more coherent account to emerge without reducing that history to a single explanatory frame.”
The exchange marked a transition from reflective inquiry to historical record.
~
*
Chapter V
*
Abstract
*
1
This section examines the sequence through which the political project articulated under Hugo Chávez assumed autocratic form. Rather than attributing this outcome to a single cause, the inquiry proceeds by tracing how leadership decisions unfolded within a convergence of historical conditions, institutional arrangements, economic pressures, and geopolitical alignments. The account does not begin from conclusion, but from record.
2 Attention remains on how authority was exercised and how its effects registered within Venezuelan society. Historical circumstance, institutional design, and external influence are examined not to simplify the record, but to make visible the interdependencies through which power consolidated over time. What emerges is not an explanatory thesis, but a configuration whose coherence can be assessed only through sustained attention to sequence and consequence.
Ricardo Morín Portrait of a President 14 x 20 inches Watercolor, sumi ink, crayon on paper 2003
*
Author’s Note
This essay continues an inquiry begun in “Portrait of a President: A Diagnostic Essay on Power, Posture, and Historical Pattern,” where patterns of executive behavior were examined through observable action rather than declared intent. The present text shifts that inquiry from description to procedure and takes a recent executive order on artificial intelligence as a case through which decisions are advanced, reviewed, and sustained.
It follows The Arithmetic of Progress, which considers how contemporary narratives of advancement often detach calculation from consequence. Read in sequence, that essay establishes the broader conditions under which claims of inevitability and efficiency gain force; the present text examines how such claims operate within the executive process itself.
The essay also builds upon Governing by Exception: The American Executive, published earlier this year, which examined how exceptional measures become normalized within the modern presidency. Where that essay focused on the expansion of executive discretion, the present text examines the procedural consequences that follow when exception becomes routine.
This essay further stands in relation to Convergence by Design or Consequence? On Trump, Putin, and the Veiled Axis from Kyiv to Caracas, which addressed alignment among contemporary autocracies at the geopolitical level. Here, the focus moves inward, toward domestic executive procedure, to consider how similar methods of authority can emerge without explicit coordination or ideological declaration.
Each essay approaches the same problem from a different register—exception, calculation, procedure, and alignment—without requiring continuity of title or theme.
This essay occupies the center of that sequence of essays. Throughout the analysis, action designates executive action as it bears upon the other branches of the American government. It begins from an observation about executive ordering under conditions of urgency and traces how constitutional constraint may be displaced in practice without being formally abolished.
Ricardo F. Morín
November 2025
Oakland Park, Florida
*
Procedural Dislocation and the Rhetoric of Dominance
I
The recent executive order framing artificial intelligence as a matter of “global dominance” offers a useful example on procedural dislocation and the rhetoric of dominance. Agreement with its stated aims is not required for the executive order to warrant examination. Its relevance does not lie in what it promises to achieve, but in the manner in which it propels decisions forward before the terms under which they should be evaluated have been configured.
Artificial intelligence enters this discussion not as a technical subject, but as a context in which executive action is presented as urgent. The order proceeds on the assumption that speed and centralized direction are necessary for success. As a result, decisions advance before existing forms of review, coordination, and regulatory formation have had an opportunity to shape their terms.
This ordering is significant. When presidential authority is asserted first, deliberation is relegated to constrained conditions. Institutional review—understood here as the pre-action criteria, thresholds, and sequencing through which decisions are ordinarily authorized—ceases to determine whether executive action should proceed and instead adjusts to action already underway. Once this sequence is fixed, subsequent forms of participation—whether arising from agencies, advisory bodies, or constitutional institutioins—may temper implementation without necessarily altering the direction of presidential decrees.
This essay treats the order as an instance of that ordering. It examines what follows when urgency governs the timing of decisions and broad assertions of purpose begin to do work normally performed by review, coordination, and rulemaking.
II
Executive decisions determine direction within the executive domain; executive action commits that determination to institutional consequence.
When decisions are taken prior to sustained review, the order of evaluation is reversed. Procedural review (as a condition of pre-authorization) no longer governs whether executive action is authorized, but instead becomes a step anticipated after executive action has already been set in motion. This inversion of review and authorization alters how responsibility is distributed within the executive process.
In this sequence, articulated criteria are deferred rather than established. Judicial review exists, but typically occurs after implementation, once policies have already taken effect. Congressional checks exist, but depend on coordination, timing, and political alignment that narratives of urgency actively compress, displace, and bypass. Constitutional remedies exist, but operate on temporal horizons incompatible with accelerated executive action. Standards by which a decision might be assessed—scope, limits, benchmarks, or conditions for revision—remain undefined at the moment of execution. The absence of articulated criteria is presented as provisional, even as executive action proceeds as though those criteria were already settled.
This analysis does not proceed from the assumption that constitutional checks are absent.Without articulated criteria, no stable reference exists against which a decision can be evaluated, adjusted, or halted. Review becomes reactive, tasked with accommodating decisions rather than testing their premises.
This sequence also alters the role of institutional participation. Agencies and advisory bodies are positioned to respond within post-implementation review rather than to contribute to the formation of the decision itself. Their involvement shifts from deliberation to implementation, narrowing the space for substantive input.
What emerges is not the elimination of review. Constraints remain formally intact, but no longer determine whether executive action proceeds; they intervene only after its action has already begun.
The result is not the elimination of constraint, but its displacement: mechanisms—designed to govern whether executive action should proceed—are repositioned to manage action already set in motion. Constitutional checks remain operative only after executive action has been set in motion, rather than governing whether that action may proceed.
III
Federal preemption is asserted before a substitute structure exists. In this case, state-level regulatory activity is set aside even though no comprehensive federal framework has yet been established to take its place. Rule by decree is asserted in advance of the mechanisms that would ordinarily support, coordinate, or limit executive action.
This is not a question of constitutional supremacy. The constitutional framework governing federal preemption state law is well established even as its application remains contested. The issue is one of sequence. Preemption typically displaces existing regulation by replacing it with a defined alternative through which responsibility, oversight, and accountability are reassigned. When that replacement is absent, displacement produces a gap rather than a transition.
This sequence reorders the role of the states. Rather than serving as sites of coordination, experimentation, or interim governance, they are treated primarily as sources of friction. Their regulatory efforts are characterized as interference even though no structure has been offered to absorb the regulatory functions being displaced.
The result of this ordeering is a form of authority exercised in advance of the institutional support required to sustain it. Preemption operates as assertion rather than as arrangement. The question that follows is not whether authority exists, but how the executive authority is expected to function once exercised without the structures that normally sustain it.
IV
The executive order invokes a global race of dominance as a justification for urgency. This reference is introduced without specification of its participants, scope, or criteria and is presented as a condition rather than as a claim requiring articulation or examination.
Because the race is not defined, it cannot be procedurally evaluated. No benchmarks are offered by which advancement or delay might be measured, and no temporal horizon is established against which executive actions might be paced. Yet the invocation is treated as decisive.
Once invoked, this global framing reshapes the timing and sequence of domestic review and coordination. Internal processes of review, coordination, and federal balance are measured against an externally asserted tempo. Procedural safeguards begin to appear as liabilities, not because they have failed, but because they operate at a pace deemed incompatible with the asserted race.
In this way, the invocation of a global race does not specify what is at stake; instead, the invocation of global competition relocates the timing of decision-making to an externally asserted pace. The absence of specification enables acceleration.
The significance of this procedural reordering lies not in whether global competition exists, but in how its invocation alters internal sequence within the American executive. An external reference is imported as a procedural rationale and allows executive decisions to advance ahead of sustained review and articulated structure.
V
Alongside external competitive framing, internal pressure also alters when and how executive decisions move forward. This pressure arises from private actors with concentrated financial exposure to the development and deployment of artificial intelligence technologies. Their investments depend on acceleration, scale, and limited regulatory constraint.
These actors do not require coordination to exert influence. Their interests converge structurally. Delays associated with sustained review, layered oversight, or decentralized regulation introduce uncertainty into investment horizons. Acceleration, by contrast, stabilizes expectations and preserves potential revenue.
Such pressure operates prior to public deliberation. It is expressed through advisory roles, policy consultations, and formal lobbying mechanisms that exist outside the sequence of open review. The influence is not illicit; it is institutionalized. What distinguishes this influence is its timing and asymmetry.
Because these interests are not fully disclosed within the formal record of decision-making and review, their effects appear indirect. Yet they shape the conditions under which urgency is framed as necessity and executive preemption as inevitability. The absence of articulated criteria does not impede this process; it facilitates it by keeping outcomes flexible while direction remains fixed.
External competition supplies a rationale for acceleration, while the pressure of internal investment sustains it. In this way, procedural dislocation is reinforced from within the executive sequence itself. Together, they create an executive environment in which acceleration is continuously justified even as institutional review and the structures of substitution remain deferred.
VI
What follows marks a shift not in policy substance, but in how executive action is oriented once procedural guidance no longer governs its timing.
When decisions continue to advance without articulated criteria or substitution structures, language begins to assume functions ordinarily carried by procedural guidance. By procedural guidance, this analysis refers to the articulated criteria, review thresholds, institutional sequencing, and substitution structures through which decisions are ordinarily evaluated, revised, or withheld before executive action proceeds. Instead, executive orders are used to frame executive action and to supply orientation where procedural guidance is missing.
In this context, words such as “dominance,” “necessity,” or “leadership” do not operate primarily as descriptions. Such terms establish direction without specification. The function of such terms is to move decisions forward while leaving objectives, limits, and measures unresolved.
This enlargement of language alters how executive action is understood. Rather than clarifying what is being done and under what conditions, language organizes attention around procedural momentum. Movement itself becomes the priority, even as the grounds for evaluation remain unsettled.
The effect is cumulative over time. As reliance on rhetorical framing increases, fewer procedural markers remain available to slow, revise, or redirect executive action. Language begins to carry responsibilities normally handled by review and specification.
At this stage, language has not displaced explanation entirely, but it has begun to exceed it. This language continues to refer to policy, yet it now performs additional work by sustaining executive action in the absence of settled procedural support.
VII
Requests for specification no longer lead to articulated criteria or review mechanisms, but to restatement of the original framing. Explanation gives way to emphasis, and emphasis to repetition, without resolving the underlying procedural gaps.
As language begins to carry responsibilities normally handled by review and specification, its relationship to explanation changes. Statements initially intended to orient understanding become reference points that are repeated rather than examined.
Over time, this pattern reduces the capacity to pause, reconsider, or revise decisions already underway. When language is relied upon to sustain action, revisiting its premises becomes more difficult. Adjustment appears as retreat, and reconsideration as delay, even though no settled standards have been articulated.
The effect of this rhetorical substitution is not overt resistance to review, but a narrowing of the scope of review. Review persists formally, yet review is increasingly tasked with accommodating decisions already advanced. The space for questioning sequence, authority, or criteria contracts without being explicitly closed.
At this point, language no longer merely advances executive action; it begins to shield it. Decisions remain explainable in broad terms, but they become less accessible to sustained examination. What has changed is not transparency, but the conditions under which clarification can still occur.
VIII
This section traces the consequences of earlier procedural substitutions by showing how evaluative reference points disappear even as executive action continues.
Outcomes are projected but not specified. Means are deployed but not measured against stable standards. A shared point of reference by which both means and outcomes might be assessed is absent. When decisions are taken prior to sustained review and sustained by rhetorical framing rather than articulated criteria, the available bases for judging decisions narrow.
In such conditions, projected outcomes can no longer function as checks on present executive action. Projected benefits remain abstract, deferred, or contingent on future clarification. Without defined benchmarks or review mechanisms, outcomes function more as justification than as objects of evaluation.
This places increased weight on the process. When ends remain indeterminate, procedural sequence becomes the only available measure of legitimacy. If that sequence is dislocated, no basis remains for distinguishing provisional executive action from settled direction.
Appeals to necessity gain prominence under these conditions. These appeals bridge the gap between uncertain means and unspecified ends by asserting inevitability. Yet inevitability does not supply measure; it advances executive action while deferring assessment.
What results is the suspension of evaluation, as judgment is deferred to outcomes that have not yet been defined. Executive means proceed without reference to ends that can be examined and leave evaluation suspended rather than resolved.
IX
The significance of what follows lies not in escalation or collapse, but in the capacity of this governing pattern to persist without triggering a formal breakdown.
Viewed through the preceding sequence, the executive order appears less as a response to a technological challenge than as an expression of how presidential authority now operates. In this sequence, constitutional constraint persists formally while losing its capacity to govern presidential timing. What defines this mode of operation is not declared ambition, but the exercise of executive authority in advance of settled structure, review, and measure.
Despite the suspension of procedural evaluation, executive action continues to advance and stabilize as a governing pattern. Executive action advances without stable criteria, and evaluation follows rather than guides it. Rhetorical framing sustains continuity once authorization, specification, and review no longer govern the initiation of action, and inevitability substitutes for articulation.
Under these conditions, governance retains motion but loses procedural reference. Decisions remain intelligible in broad terms, yet increasingly difficult to assess, revise, or halt.
Rather than resolving into crisis, the condition persists through executive assertion rather than procedural sequence. Executive authority continues to function, but it does so with fewer internal points of correction.
The significance of this condition lies not in its novelty, but in its durability. When procedural dislocation becomes a stable feature of executive action, it reshapes how legitimacy is understood and how accountability can be exercised. What is produced is not exception, but a normalized way of proceeding.
X
A constitutional order presumes cooperation without being able to compel it in advance. Law establishes procedures, thresholds, and divisions of authority, but it cannot secure the disposition of the actors who must inhabit those roles. The responsibility for cooperation is therefore placed precisely at the point where predictability can no longer be secured—human judgment, ambition, fear, calculation, fatigue, pride. This is not a failure of law as text; it is a condition of law as lived structure.
Seen this way, instability is not an aberration introduced by bad actors alone. It is an ever-present possibility generated by the fact that constitutional systems rely on restraint exercised voluntarily, sequentially, and often against immediate interest. Where cooperation falters, procedures remain formally intact yet lose operational force in practice. Law persists on paper while its coordinating capacity weakens over time.
This is why the problem traced throughout this essay is ultimately ethical rather than moralistic. It does not ask who is right or wrong, but what can reasonably be expected of human agents operating under pressure, asymmetry, and incomplete trust. Constitutional governance assumes a minimum ethic of reciprocity—an agreement to wait, to contest, to defer, to revise. When that ethic fails to be sustained, the system does not collapse at once; it persists in a condition where coordination no longer governs action. The authority of the Executive fills the gap left by cooperation, often in the name of continuity.
This explains why displacement proves durable, why restraint remains fragile, and why systems can continue to function even as their ethical foundations lose sustaining force. The irony sustained here is not pessimistic; it is lucid as an end to the inquiry.
Cooperative frameworks are always provisional. They exist in tension with mistrust, strategic defection, and shifting circumstance. They are never resolved, only renegotiated. The ethical fact is not that mistrust appears, but that governance must function despite it.
*
Pre-Procedural Conditions of Dislocation
*
Political responsibility begins before governance does. It precedes programs, slogans, and institutional choreography. Long before authority is exercised, it is entrusted, and in that act a judgment is already made—not about policy detail, but about temperament, restraint, and capacity for self-limitation.
The ethical center of leadership is not revealed through ambition or rhetorical promise, but through signs that are immediately legible: flexibility without opportunism, firmness without domination, caution without paralysis. These qualities are visible almost at once, often within moments of exposure. To miss them is not a failure of intelligence, but of attention.
This responsibility cannot be displaced onto institutions after the fact. Nor can it be excused by urgency, fatigue, or personal grievance. Once authority is conferred, law is required to manage what has already been authorized, even when correction becomes costly or delayed. No procedural safeguard can fully compensate for ethical indifference at the moment of selection.
Political systems do not deteriorate solely because of those who govern. They also reflect the standards—explicit or tacit—by which leaders are chosen. Collective well-being depends less on promised outcomes than on the character permitted to command. In this sense, leadership is not imposed upon a society. It is recognized, accepted, and sustained by it.
Ricardo Morín Still Eight: The Space Thought Finds Oil on linen mounted on wood panel 12 by 15 by 3/4inches 2010
Ricardo F. Morín
Dec. 2025
Oakland Park, Fl
*
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This essay examines a phenomenon that emerges in societies where civic limits and intellectual appetite coexist. It does not describe a psychological condition or a sociological trend, nor does it judge any nation. Its purpose is simpler: to observe how thought adapts when the public space in which it moves is narrower than the private space in which it develops.
ABSTRACT
This essay investigates how intellectual life often persists—even thrives—in environments where civic participation is restricted. It describes the structural conditions that make this coexistence possible, the historical habits that render it familiar, and the tensions it produces. Rather than seeking causes or proposing remedies, the essay observes how thought finds room to act when civic space contracts, and how this adaptation shapes cultural life.
1
Every society creates conditions in which thought must find its footing. In some places, civic life offers wide avenues for debate, dissent, and organized participation. In others, the avenues narrow: institutions limit expression, political continuity restricts competition, or public life becomes regulated by boundaries that citizens did not choose. Yet even within these limits, thought does not disappear. It looks for other spaces—quieter, more internal, less visible—where reflection can continue.
2
This coexistence is not contradictory. A population may cultivate disciplined study, meticulous reading habits, and a strong appetite for ideas while navigating restrictions on political voice. Intellectual inquiry can flourish in classrooms, libraries, private circles, or artistic practice even when formal participation in public life is constrained. The two conditions do not cancel one another; they unfold in parallel.
3
Part of this coexistence is historical. Societies inherit habits shaped over decades or generations. When public limits remain stable, they become part of the environment rather than an interruption. People learn to navigate around those limits, allocating some questions to public conversation and others to private reflection. Over time, this arrangement no longer feels provisional; it becomes a familiar pattern of life.
4
Another part of the coexistence is structural. Not every form of thinking requires the same degree of civic freedom. Institutional critique demands a wide public space, but philosophical examination, ethical reflection, and conceptual inquiry can develop in quieter settings. These forms of thought do not depend on protest or political leverage. They depend on attention, which can remain active even when public expression is not.
5
Yet this adaptation introduces a tension. Thought that flourishes privately may find no path into shared life. Insight lives in the individual but cannot circulate through institutions. The result is not silence but separation: intellectual depth on one side, civic restriction on the other. Each remains intact, but the bridge between them is narrow.
6
This tension is not a paradox but a structure. Intellectual inquiry survives by adjusting its location. It moves inward, turning the private sphere into a workshop for ideas. It becomes a form of endurance rather than resistance. This endurance is neither passive nor resigned; it is a way of continuing to think when public avenues are limited.
7
The phenomenon is neither exclusive to one region nor confined to a single political model. It appears wherever civic limits coincide with cultural ambition—whether shaped by history, institutions, or circumstance. What differs from one society to another is not the existence of this tension but how it is lived: as normalcy, as compromise, or as a quiet imbalance accepted as part of daily life.
8
The deeper question is not why this coexistence happens, nor whether it should be otherwise. The question is what this coexistence reveals: that thought seeks space even when civic space contracts; that reflection persists even when public expression narrows; and that the need to understand does not vanish under limits. It simply relocates, finding equilibrium—uneasy, stable, and always in motion.
Ricardo Morín Still Thirty-three: When All We Know Is Borrowed Oil on linen & board, 15″ x 12″x 1/2″ 2012.
Author’s Note:
This essay concludes the trilogy begun with The Colors of Certainty and continued with The Discipline of Doubt. It reflects on perception, ambiguity, and ambivalence as conditions that complicate our access to truth, especially in an age of mistrust. The trilogy as a whole asks how certainty, doubt, and ambivalence each shape the paradoxes of human understanding—and how reality is always encountered in fragments, never in full possession.
The purpose of this essay is not to resolve these tensions but to articulate them. Its value lies less in offering solutions than in clarifying the paradoxes that underlie our shared attempts to understand reality.
Ricardo Morín, Bala Cynwyd, Pa. August 30, 2025.
Abstract:
This essay examines perception, ambiguity, and belief as distinct but interrelated conditions that shape human access to reality. Ambiguity marks the instability of meaning; perception denotes our filtered and partial contact with the world; and ambivalence names the paradoxical ground on which truth is sought. Ambivalence sustains the search even as it undermines the certainty that truth has been attained. Writing and reading reveal these dynamics with particular clarity. Through writing, thought evolves; the writer participates in this evolution and discovers that meaning may remain both untranslatable and questionable. Yet this very incompleteness expands understanding, even when what is grasped cannot be fully shared. Extending beyond communication, the essay suggests that reality itself is encountered only in fragments—through gestures, silences, and misperceptions that weaken the line between appearance and reality. Artificial intelligence illustrates this condition in two ways: as a tool, it amplifies practical doubts about authorship and authenticity; as a mirror, it reflects the deeper ambivalence that precedes it. The essay concludes that ambivalence is not a detour from truth but the paradox through which truth, if it arises at all, briefly appears.
~
Perception
The word perception carries within it a history that mirrors the shifting ways in which cultures have understood reality. From the Latin perceptio, it meant first a “taking in,” a “gathering,” or even a “harvest.” To perceive was to collect impressions, as one might collect grain from a field: passive in form, but active in intent.
In Greek thought, perception was bound to aisthēsis—sensation was the contact one felt with the world. Here it stood closer to the arts, to the immediacy of feeling, than to the systematic reasoning of philosophy.
During the Middle Ages, particularly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Aristotle’s writings were recovered and incorporated into Christian scholastic thought. What had been a pagan philosophy of sensation and intellect was reinterpreted by thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas within a theological framework of knowledge. Perception was defined as the reception of sensory data by the intellect, a necessary stage through which sensation was elevated into understanding.
With the rise of modern philosophy, the term fractured. For Descartes, perception could deceive; for Locke, it formed the foundation of experience; for Kant, it was structured by categories that both opened and constrained our access to reality. By then perception had already become ambivalent: indispensable for knowing, but never certain in its truth.
Today the word extends further still, connoting not only sensation but also interpretation, bias, and opinion. To say “that is your perception” is no longer to affirm contact with the real but to indicate distance, distortion, or subjectivity. The evolution of the word reveals a semantic instability that parallels the essay’s claim: our access to reality is always shaped by ambivalence. What perception grants, it also unsettles.
Ambivalence, and the Limits of Truth
Perception is never a simple act of receiving what is already there. It is always mediated by memory, expectation, and predisposition. In every exchange—whether in words on a page or in silence between two people—meaning shifts, unsettled and provisional. From this shifting ground arises ambiguity, and from ambiguity, the unease that unsettles belief.
For the reader, this instability is unavoidable. Every response, even silence, is colored by trust or mistrust, sympathy or suspicion, openness or fatigue. Rarely does a reader approach a text in innocence, for every act of reading is shaped by assumptions that condition the reception of words.
The author is not exempt from this interpretive burden. The act of writing does not end with publication but continues in the uncertain work of reading readers. A pause in conversation, a fleeting acknowledgment, or a lack of reply can be interpreted as disinterest, disapproval, or indifference. In this way, writing interprets interpretations and multiplies the layers of ambiguity until the meaning of the work appears not only untranslatable but also questionable. Yet it is precisely through this reflection that writing continues, for without it thought cannot develop. By persevering in this process, the writer participates in a widening of understanding, even when that understanding cannot be fully shared.
Such uncertainty is not a flaw of communication but part of its structure. Anyone who seeks to understand through writing must accept that clarity will always be provisional and that expression will always fall short. The act of putting thought into words reveals the distance between intention and reception, but it also creates the possibility of seeing reality from new angles. Even when what is expressed cannot be communicated in full, the process itself enlarges understanding and deepens awareness of what is partial and in flux.
Ambivalence, therefore, is not hesitation but the paradoxical condition in which the search for meaning takes place. It joins conviction and doubt, the desire for certainty and the recognition of its limits. To write within ambivalence is to continue searching even when the result cannot be communicated without loss. This condition—and not the illusion of final clarity—enables thought to move forward.
Truth, if it is ever reached, emerges despite the unstable ground of perception and ambiguity. We arrive at it in spite of ourselves, our tensions, and our limitations. It is not only major errors that weaken certainty: a nuance misperceived, a pause misunderstood, or an ambiguous gesture may also diminish trust. Daily experience shows that the line between appearance and reality is too thin to provide lasting assurance.
But this tension is not limited to writing or reading. It extends more deeply, into our relation with reality itself. Ambivalence is not only a feature of communication but also a feature of existence. To perceive is always to partake of the world incompletely; to live is to do so under conditions of partial presence. At times we see clearly, at other times dimly, and often not at all. This rhythm of presence and withdrawal marks every relationship—between persons, between societies, and even between humanity and nature.
Technology has sharpened our awareness of this condition. Artificial intelligence, for example, dramatizes the instability already present in human perception. As a tool, it enables refinement of expression while amplifying doubts about authorship and authenticity. As a mirror, it reflects the deeper ambivalence that precedes it and shapes all mediation. Thus AI does not diminish thought but magnifies the unease that accompanies human access to reality: the sense that what is offered is incomplete, unreliable, and never fully participatory.
The task, then, is not to eliminate ambiguity but to recognize it as part of reality itself. Perception is interpretive, belief is unstable, and mistrust is a constant companion. Ambivalence is not a detour from truth but the path along which truth—if it comes at all—must travel. The challenge is not to restore a certainty that never existed but to learn to live within partial participation, to accept that what we call reality is always encountered in fragments.
In this sense, perception, ambiguity, and belief will always remain unsettled. The writer cannot control how words are read, nor can the reader fully grasp what was meant. No one can claim full possession of reality. Every relation to the world depends on fragile conditions, where appearance and reality touch without ever coinciding. If truth appears at all, it does so briefly and incompletely, arising only through ambivalence. Yet ambivalence itself is a paradoxical condition: it sustains our search for truth even as it undermines the certainty we long to possess. Truth cannot confer ownership because it never rests.
Annotated Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah: The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. (Arendt analyzes action, labor, and work as distinct ways of engaging reality. Her distinction between appearance and reality, and her insistence that truth emerges through shared human activity, is directly relevant to the essay’s theme of perception and ambivalence.)
Gadamer, Hans-Georg: Truth and Method. New York: Continuum, 1975. (In this foundational text in hermeneutics, Gadamer explores how understanding arises through interpretation rather than objectivity. His view that truth is approached dialogically supports the essay’s claim that truth emerges “within ambivalence rather than beyond it.”)
Girard, René: Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965. (Girard’s theory of mimetic desire shows how interpretation, desire, and misunderstanding shape human relations. His work underlines the fragility of belief and the unstable boundary between appearance and reality.)
Nussbaum, Martha: Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. (Nussbaum argues that public emotions—such as love, compassion, and solidarity—are essential to sustaining justice. Her insights reveal how belief is fragile and shaped by interpretation; it resonates with the essay’s concern about trust, ambivalence, and human participation in reality.)
Turkle, Sherry: Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011. (Turkle investigates how technology mediates human relationships and perceptions. Her work frames AI as a mirror of doubt; it shows how mediation both enables connection and erodes authenticity—an idea central to the essay.)
This essay is the second part of a trilogy that examines certainty, doubt, and ambivalence as conditions shaping our understanding of reality. It turns to doubt as both discipline and burden: a practice that unsettles claims of knowledge yet makes understanding possible. Here doubt is not treated as weakness but as a necessary stance within human communication. Its value lies not in closure but in keeping open the fragile line between appearance and reality. The trilogy begins with The Colors of Certainty and concludes with When All We Know Is Borrowed.
The Discipline of Doubt
Skepticism and doubt are often spoken of as if they were the same, yet they differ in essential ways. Skepticism inclines toward distrust: it assumes claims are false until proven otherwise. Doubt, by contrast, does not begin with rejection. It suspends judgment, while it withholds both assent and denial, so that questions may unfold. Skepticism closes inquiry prematurely; doubt preserves its possibility. Properly understood, inquiry belongs not to belief or disbelief, but to doubt.
This distinction matters because inquiry rarely follows a direct path to certainty. More often it is layered, restless, and incomplete. Consider the case of medicine. A patient may receive a troubling diagnosis and consult several physicians, while each offers a different prognosis. One may be more hopeful, another more guarded, yet none entirely conclusive. The temptation in such circumstances is to cling to the most reassuring answer or to dismiss all of them as unreliable. Both impulses distort the situation. Inquiry requires another path: to compare, to weigh, to test, and ultimately to accept that certainty may not be attainable. In this recognition, doubt demonstrates its discipline: it sustains investigation without promising resolution and teaches that the absence of finality is not failure but the condition for continued understanding.
Even within medicine itself, leaders recognize this tension. Abraham Verghese, together with other Stanford scholars, has pointed out that barely half of what is taught in medical schools proves directly relevant to diagnosis; the rest is speculative or unfounded. This observation does not aim to discredit medical education but rather to underline the need for a method that privileges verification over uncritical repetition. Clinical diagnosis, therefore, does not rest on an accumulation of certainties but on the constant practice of disciplined doubt: to question, to discard what is irrelevant, and to hold what is provisional while seeking greater precision.
History provides another vivid lesson in the figure of Galileo Galilei. When he trained his telescope on the night sky in 1609, he observed four moons orbiting Jupiter and phases of Venus that could only be explained if the planet circled the sun. These discoveries contradicted the Ptolemaic system, which for centuries had fixed the earth at the center of creation. Belief demanded obedience to tradition; skepticism might have dismissed all inherited knowledge as corrupt. Galileo’s path was different. He measured, documented, and published, while he knew that evidence had to be weighed rather than simply asserted or denied. The cost of this doubt was severe: interrogation, censorship, and house arrest. Yet it was precisely his refusal to assent too quickly—his suspension of judgment until the evidence was overwhelming—that made inquiry possible. Galileo shows how doubt can preserve the conditions of knowledge even under the heaviest pressure to believe.
Literature offers a parallel insight. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the young prince is confronted by the ghost of his murdered father, who demands vengeance. To believe would be to accept the apparition’s word at once and to kill the king without hesitation. To be skeptical would be to dismiss the ghost as hallucination or trickery. Hamlet does neither. He allows doubt to govern his response. He tests the ghost’s claim by staging a play that mirrors the supposed crime, as he watches the king’s reaction for confirmation. Hamlet’s refusal to act on belief alone, and his unwillingness to dismiss the ghost outright, illustrates the discipline of doubt. His tragedy lies not in doubting, but in stretching doubt beyond proportion, until hesitation itself consumes action. Shakespeare makes clear that inquiry requires balance: enough doubt to test what is claimed, enough resolve to act when evidence has spoken.
The demands of public life make the difference equally clear. In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, citizens were asked to place immediate trust in official pronouncements or, conversely, to dismiss them as deliberate falsehoods. Belief led some to cling uncritically to each reassurance, however inconsistent; skepticism led others to reject all guidance as propaganda. Doubt offered another course: to ask what evidence supported the claims, to weigh early reports against later studies, and to accept that knowledge was provisional and evolving. The uncertainty was uncomfortable, but it was also the only honest response to a rapidly changing reality.
A similar pattern emerged after the September 11 attacks. Governments urged populations to choose: either support military intervention or stand accused of disloyalty. Belief accepted the justification for war at face value; skepticism dismissed all official claims as manipulation. Doubt, however, asked what evidence existed for weapons of mass destruction, what interests shaped the rush to invasion, and what alternatives were excluded from consideration. To doubt in such circumstances was not disloyalty but responsibility: the attempt to withhold assent until claims could be verified. These examples show that doubt is not passivity. It is the active discipline of testing what is said against what can be known: to resist the lure of premature closure.
Verification requires precisely this suspension: not the comfort of belief, nor the dismissal of skepticism, but the discipline of lingering within uncertainty long enough for proof to take shape. One might say that verification becomes possible only when belief is held in abeyance. Belief craves closure, skepticism assumes falsehood, but doubt stills the mind in the interval—where truth may draw near without the illusion of possession.
The same principle extends to the temptations of success and recognition. Success and fame resemble ashes: the hollow remains of a fire once bright but now extinguished, incapable of offering true joy to an inquiring mind. Ashes evoke a flame that once burned but has spent itself. So it is with fame: when the applause fades, only residue lingers. Belief, too, provides temporary shelter, yet it grows brittle when never tested. Recognition and conviction alike promise permanence, yet both prove fragile. A mind intent on inquiry cannot find rest in them. It requires something less visible, more enduring: the refusal to define itself too quickly, the discipline of anonymity.
Anonymity here does not mean retreat from the world. It means withholding assertion or purpose until knowledge has ripened. To declare too swiftly what one is—or what one knows—is to foreclose discovery. By necessity, the inquiring mind remains anonymous. It resists capture by labels or the scaffolding of recognition. Its openness is its strength. It stays attuned to what has not yet been revealed.
Our present age makes such discipline all the more urgent. Technology hastens every demand for certainty: headlines must be immediate, opinions instantaneous, identities reduced to profiles and tags. Social media thrives on belief asserted and repeated, rarely on doubt considered and tested. Algorithms reward speed and outrage, punishing hesitation as weakness and contradiction as betrayal. To cultivate doubt and anonymity is therefore a form of resistance. It shelters the subtlety of thought from the pressure of velocity and spectacle. It refuses to allow inquiry to be diminished into slogans or certainty compressed into catchphrases.
The discipline of doubt teaches that truth is never possessed, only pursued. Success, fame, and belief may glitter briefly, but they collapse into ashes. What endures is the quiet labor of questioning, the patience of remaining undefined until knowledge gathers form. To believe is to settle into residue; to doubt is to stand within the living fire. To question is to stir the flame; to believe is to collect the ashes.
*
** Cover Design:
Ricardo Morín: Newsprint Series Nº 2 (2006). 51″ × 65″. Ink, white-out, and blotted oil paint on newsprint. From the Triangulation series.
Annotated Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah: Between Past and Future. New York: Viking Press, 1961. (Arendt examines the importance of thinking without absolute supports and illuminates how the discipline of doubt resists political and social certainties).
Bauman, Zygmunt: Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000. (Bauman describes the fluidity and precariousness of certainties in modern life and reinforces the idea of doubt as a condition in the face of contemporary volatility).
Berlin, Isaiah: The Crooked Timber of Humanity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. (Berlin analyzes the pluralism of values and the impossibility of single certainties and supports the need to live with unresolved tensions).
Bitbol-Hespériès, Annie: Descartes’ Natural Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2023. (Bitbol-Hespériès examines how Cartesian natural philosophy emerges from a constant exercise of methodical doubt; she offers a contemporary reading that links science and metaphysics in Descartes’ thought).
Han, Byung-Chul: In the Swarm: Digital Prospects. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017. (Han critiques the pressure of transparency and digital acceleration; he provides insights into how technology disfigures the patience required for doubt).
Han, Byung-Chul: The Disappearance of Rituals. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020. (Han explores how digital society weakens spaces of repetition and anticipation to highlight the urgency of recovering anonymity and slowness in inquiry).
Croskerry, Pat, Cosby, Karen S., Graber, Mark, and Singh, Hardeep, eds.: Diagnosis: Interpreting the Shadows. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2017. (Croskerry, Cosby, Graber, and Singh address the cognitive complexity of diagnostic reasoning: they show how uncertainty is inherent in clinical practice and how disciplined doubt can reduce diagnostic error).
Elstein, Arthur S., and Schwartz, Alan: Clinical Problem Solving and Diagnostic Decision Making: Selective Review of the Cognitive Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. (A landmark study in medical decision-making, it shows how diagnostic reasoning is less about static knowledge and more about methodical doubt and verification).
Finocchiaro, Maurice: Retrying Galileo, 1633–1992. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. (Finocchiaro explores the trials and historical reinterpretations of Galileo’s case; he shows how scientific doubt clashed with religious authority and how it has been re-evaluated in modernity).
Gaukroger, Stephen: Descartes: An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. (An intellectual biography that situates Descartes in the cultural context of the seventeenth century and illuminates how Cartesian doubt was also a strategy against religious and scientific tensions).
Garber, Daniel: Descartes Embodied: Reading Cartesian Philosophy through Cartesian Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. (Garber analyzes the close relationship between Descartes’ science and his philosophical method and underscores how scientific practice reinforced the discipline of doubt).
Graber, Mark L., Gordon D. Schiff, and Hardeep Singh: The Patient and the Diagnosis: Navigating Clinical Uncertainty. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. (Graber explores how physicians manage uncertainty and emphasizes that precision in diagnosis emerges from structured methods rather than unquestioned knowledge).
Machamer, Peter, ed.: The Cambridge Companion to Galileo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. (In this collection of updated essays presenting Galileo’s work from historical, philosophical, and political perspectives, Machamer illuminates how empirical doubt transformed cosmology).
Nussbaum, Martha: Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. (Nussbaum examines how liberal institutions can responsibly cultivate public emotions—such as love, tolerance, and solidarity. Her arguments enrich the section of the essay on civic-life, which shows how emotional cultivation, beyond belief or skepticism, supports societal inquiry).
Popkin, Richard: The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. (In this historical study of skepticism, Popkin shows how skepticism evolved between radical distrust and the discipline of inquiry).
Shakespeare, William: Hamlet. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. (This play offers a literary embodiment of doubt as an ambivalent force: it functions both as the engine of inquiry and the risk of paralysis).
Shea, William, and Artigas, Mariano : Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. (An accessible and well-documented narrative of Galileo’s conflict with the Church; it illustrates how persistence in verifying doubt had vital and political consequences).
Verghese, Abraham, Saint, Sanjay, and Cooke, Molly: “Critical Analysis of the ‘One Half of Medical Education Is Wrong’ Maxim.” Academic Medicine 86, no. 4 (2011): 419–423. (Authored by Stanford-affiliated leaders in medical education, the report argues that much of medical teaching lacks direct relevance to diagnostic accuracy and underscores the necessity of disciplined doubt and re-evaluation).
This essay is the first part of a trilogy that explores how human beings approach reality through certainty, doubt, and ambivalence. It begins with certainty—how the desire for stability drives thought and belief, even when what appears secure is already open to change. Though written from personal inquiry, its scope is broader: the question of certainty concerns not one life but the fragile conditions of shared reality. The trilogy continues with The Discipline of Doubt and concludes with When All We Know Is Borrowed.
Ricardo Morín, Bala Cynwyd, Pa. August 23, 2025
~
The Colors of Certainty
We live in an age unsettled by division. The subtleties of thought that once allowed us to pause, to weigh, and to distinguish are increasingly swept aside by the demand for immediate clarity. Everything is urged toward opposites: yes or no, ally or enemy, awake or asleep. The pace of public life, accelerated by technology and amplified by conflict, leaves little patience for nuance. Contradiction, which once signaled the restless work of an honest mind, is now treated as treachery. In this atmosphere, to admit complexity is to risk mistrust, and even the smallest hesitation is judged as weakness. We are asked, again and again, to define ourselves as though identity were a single stroke, not a layered drawing made across time.
Symbols flourish in such a climate while they reduce complexity into consumable images. Few have proven more enduring than the pill metaphors drawn from The Matrix film. When it appeared in 1999, the scene of choosing between a red pill and a blue pill was a cinematic device, which dramatized the tension between reality and illusion. Its influence grew gradually, as the film became a generational touchstone. Over the decades that followed, the pills slipped into online communities and political rhetoric only to harden into modes of thought that now shape how we imagine truth and the identity of belonging. To take the red pill became a declaration of awakening, access to hidden truths. To take the blue pill was to be mocked for complacency. Eventually the darker black pill emerged into both despair and fatalism embraced as destiny.
Once this logic takes hold, the world itself is reduced to a theater of absolutes. Disagreement becomes disloyalty, and belonging is measured not by shared life but by categorical allegiance. I have felt this even in conversations with people I have known for decades. In one such exchange, I remarked that I was appalled by Noam Chomsky’s recent habit, even in his nineties, of opposing Western hegemony over Russia as though that stance could excuse the war in Ukraine. Yet in another context, I expressed admiration for Chomsky’s earlier work on linguistic relevance in science four decades ago, which continues to illuminate how language shapes knowledge. To my interlocutor, these two statements seemed incompatible, as if they could not both be true. The expectation was that my judgment had to be seamless: either I rejected Chomsky entirely or endorsed him wholly.
Why must one justify such distinctions, as though every judgment were required to form a single line of allegiance? The contexts are not the same—one belongs to the 1980s, another to the present; one to the realm of linguistics, another to geopolitics. Yet in today’s climate, the demand for congruence is relentless. It reflects the pill logic that has seeped into our speech and habits of thought: one is either awake or asleep, aligned or opposed, consistent across every domain or untrustworthy in all.
That same craving for certainty also gave us Infowars—the radio podcast. Founded in 1999, the very year The Matrix was released, it became a commercial theater of the red pill metaphor. Infowars thrived on dramatizing crisis, telling its audience that elites, governments, or hidden forces manipulated events at every turn. What institutions explained as complexity, Infowars simplified into betrayal. The clarity it offered was intoxicating: good versus evil, freedom versus tyranny, awake versus deceived. It was not simply ideas being sold, but certainty itself—packaged with survival kits, supplements, and slogans. In seeking to liberate its audience from illusion, Infowars created a new one, offering not understanding but a permanent performance of awakening.
The narrowing of discourse is not only about politics and ideology, but it also extends to who is permitted to speak. I was reminded of this in a private exchange, where writing itself was dismissed as the work of an “armchair liberal” or a “limousine socialist.” According to this view, only those directly scarred by battle may speak of war, only those who have suffered prejudice firsthand may give voice to injustice, and to write as an observer is to mock the reality of struggle. It is a charge meant to discredit, as though the act of “fighting with a keyboard” were less real than hand combat in a bloodied field. Yet such suspicion denies what writing has always been: a means of bearing witness, of preserving memory, of shaping the conversation through which societies recognize themselves. The pen has never replaced experience, but it has always transformed it into something shareable and durable. To demand firsthand suffering as the sole qualification for speech is to reduce witness to autobiography and to strip dialogue of the breadth that comes when voices join from different vantage points.
Another difficulty lies in language itself. Writers who seek precision—who stretch language to its sharpest edge—often find that what emerges are metaphors. Even when grounded in substantiated terms, description requires figures of thought, images, and analogies that can never be wholly exact. The question is how precise language can ever be. Even the most brilliant minds struggle with definitions, because in their best formulations they remain presumptive theories. To acknowledge this is not to diminish language but to recognize that our dependence on tropes is not weakness but necessity. Story lines and metaphors are the bridges of comprehension, without which complexity would dissolve into noise. To lean on metaphor is not necessarily to abandon truth but to approach it by way of what can be shared.
What began as a film’s conceit has become a method of thinking, and in many ways a prison. The Matrix offered its audience a vision of awakening through choice, but our culture has taken that image and turned it into a grid of loyalties, where every stance is measured by whether one has swallowed the right capsule. Infowars amplified this posture; it dramatized the hunger for certainty until conspiracy became a substitute for thought. Suspicion of the writer’s position narrowed it further while it mocked reflection as inauthentic and demanded that speech bear the scars of direct experience before it could count as legitimate. And beneath it all lies the frailty of language itself: its inability to define with absolute precision, its reliance on metaphors that shape the very realities they describe.
To speak today of red pills, blue pills, or black pills is not only to reference a film or a subculture; it is to acknowledge the grip of a society that prefers binaries to dialogue, antagonism to complexity, performance to reflection. To resist that grip is to remember that thought is not a pill to be swallowed but a conversation to be carried, a conversation sustained in the fragile medium of language itself. However uncertain, however provisional, it is in that ongoing act of speaking and listening that culture remains alive—where friendship can endure, where witness can be honored, and where the truths no single color can contain still find their voice.
*
About the cover image:
Newsprint Series Nº 9, 2006, by Ricardo Morín (47” × 74”): Translucent dyes, ink, white-out, and blotted oil paint on newsprint.
This image belongs to a series that transforms fragments of printed matter into layered fields of color and erasure, this piece speaks to the instability of certainty itself. The pigments veil and expose in turns, while the newsprint beneath reminds us that truth is mediated, provisional, and never free of interpretation. As with language in the essay, meaning emerges only through contrast, through what resists containment.
Annotated Bibliography
Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. New York: Harper Business, 2006. (A classic study in behavioral psychology showing how persuasion exploits binary choices and authority cues, useful for understanding the appeal of pill metaphors and the certainty promised by conspiracy movements.)
Lakoff, George, and Johnson, Mark: Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. (A foundational text on metaphor in cognition and language, relevant to the essay’s argument that even the most precise use of language depends on tropes and figurative structures for human comprehension.)
Marwick, Alice, and Lewis, Rebecca: Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online. New York: Data & Society Research Institute, 2017. (This analytical report documents how conspiracy narratives spread through online ecosystems; it highlights the role of platforms in amplifying symbolic binaries such as “red pill” awakening.)
Pew Research Center: “Public Trust in Government: 1958–2023”. Washington: Pew Research Center, 2023. (Presents longitudinal data on the decay of institutional trust in the United States and offers a data-driven context for why audiences turned to alternative voices such as Infowars.)
Southern Poverty Law Center: “Male Supremacy”. Montgomery: SPLC, 2019. (A report classifying the Incel subculture and related groups within the larger “male supremacist ecosystem,” cited in connection to the black pill ideology and its links to violence.)
Sunstein, Cass R., and Vermeule, Adrian: Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014. (This book explores why conspiracy theories flourish and frames them as efforts to create certainty in moments of social disorientation. It is highly relevant to the discussion of Infowars as a commercial theater of the red pill metaphor.)
Taguieff, Pierre-André: The New Culture Wars. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2020. (This book is a political-philosophical treatment of identity politics and binary antagonisms in Western democracies: it offers a perspective on how pill metaphors entered the broader theater of culture wars.)
Tversky, Amos, and Kahneman, Daniel: Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. (A landmark in cognitive science explaining why people reduce complex realities into simplified binaries; it anchors the essay’s meditation on the lure of certainty.)
Ricardo Morin Sonata Series Each 30″x 22″= 60″h x 66″ overall Watercolor on paper 2003
The Whittington chime, though rooted in the specific historical and ecclesiastical context of St. Mary-le-Bow in London, speaks in a language far broader than its origins. Every fifteen minutes, its melody punctuates the passage of time—not with dominance or insistence, but with a sequence of tones that seem to lean toward attentiveness rather than control. It does not call; it invites. Its fourfold phrasing unfolds with the day and carves it gently into intervals of awareness.
The hour does not ask to be heard.
It leans, it yields, it breathes.
In four phrases, time steps into its own shadow—
Not to rule, but to be received.
The first phrase is sparse and anticipatory. It announces nothing—yet it creates space for something to begin. The second phrase, slightly more confident, suggests that the shape of what’s coming may already be present in what has been. The third phrase swells with fullness, as though recognizing that something unspoken has come to form. And the fourth does not repeat or resolve—it releases. A soft culmination, an unforced closure. Nothing more is needed.
Four phrases like footprints.
Not forward, but inward.
The last does not complete the first—
It simply continues without demand.
Time is neither summoned nor announced—it is welcomed in silence. The melody performs a quiet orienting function. It makes no claims, prescribes no doctrine, and excludes no one. It requires attention, not belief. It passes through space and enters those who allow it, and in doing so, it reveals time not as a line to be followed, but as a vessel to be filled.
There is no message, only rhythm.
No doctrine, only form.
Not a path to walk,
But a shape to inhabit.
This surrender—this subtle willingness to listen—is not weakness, nor is it a form of passivity. It is a kind of interior readiness, a posture of faith in what does not insist upon itself. As one hears the chime at a distance—through open window, across an empty street, or at the center of a sleepless night—it becomes clear that regularity is not rigidity. It is a form of grounding, a pulse that reminds us of something more than measurement: the possibility that rhythm itself is a form of remembering.
Some things endure not because they hold us fast—
But because they return.
Each return is a soft petition:
Are you listening now?
To be transformed by time, the vessel must remain open. And openness is not emptiness in the deficient sense, but the fullness of a receptivity that listens before it responds. There are patterns here, but they do not bind. They unfold. Each phrase in the chime allows what came before to echo—faintly, without repetition—and then continues without imitation. It does not search for novelty, nor does it cling to what has passed.
It simply arrives.
An echo does not ask for an answer.
It waits until the shape of silence
Begins to sing it back.
In this way, the melody becomes an offering. And if there is meaning to be found in its intervals, it is not imposed from without. It is disclosed in the act of listening. Each person who hears it becomes part of its form, not by adding to it, but by receiving it. And in receiving, they are also shaped.
Some questions do not seek reply.
They seek a place to rest.
They carry their answers folded within—
Waiting only to be heard.
We often think of arrival as the end of something—as the completion of a search. But perhaps it is not the final step that matters most. Perhaps what matters is the quiet unfolding that prepares us to meet it. The chime does not deliver anything. It accompanies. It affirms that movement can be gentle, that order can serve grace, and that meaning is not attained, but awakened …
… Power, Storytelling, and the Fear of Losing Significance“
By Ricardo Morin, July 2025
Ricardo Morin The Stilobato of Zeus Underwater CGI 2003
Abstract
This essay examines the human mind’s compulsion to invent stories—not merely to understand reality, but to replace it. It explores how narrative becomes a refuge from the void, a form of self-authorship that seeks both meaning and control. The tension between rational observation and imaginative projection is not a flaw in human reason, but a clue to our instability: we invent to matter, to belong, and to assert that we are more than we fear we might be. At its core, this is a reflection on the seductive authority of story—the way it offers not just identity but grandeur, not just comfort but a fragile illusion of power. Beneath every myth may lie the terror of nothingness—and the quiet hope that imagination might rescue us from the fear of a diminished understanding of our own importance.
.
The Delusion of Authority: Power, Storytelling, and the Fear of Losing Significance
We tell stories to make sense of life. That much seems obvious. But if we look a little deeper, we may find that the stories we tell—about ourselves, our beliefs, our traditions, even our suffering—aren’t just about sense-making. They’re about power. Not always power over others, but something more private and often more dangerous: the power to feel central, secure, and superior in a world that rarely offers those guarantees.
This need shows up in ways that often appear noble: tradition, loyalty, virtue, cultural pride, spiritual clarity. But beneath many of these lies a hunger to be more than we are. To matter more than we fear we do. To fix the feeling that we are not quite enough on our own.
We don’t like to think of this as a thirst for power. It sounds selfish. But in its quieter form, it’s not selfishness—it’s survival. It’s the need to look in the mirror and see someone real. To look at the world and feel part of a story that means something. And when we don’t feel that, we make one up.
Sometimes it takes the shape of tradition: the rituals, the mottos, the flags. These things give us the illusion that we are part of something lasting, something sacred. But often, what they really do is offer us borrowed certainty. We repeat what others have repeated before us, and in that repetition we feel safe. We mistake performance for truth. This is how belonging becomes obedience—and how ritual becomes a mask that hides the absence of real thought.
Sometimes it takes the shape of insight. We adopt the language of spiritual clarity or mystical knowing. We speak in riddles, or listen to those who do. But often, this too is about authority: the idea that we can bypass doubt and land in a place of higher understanding. When we hear phrases such as “listen with all your being,” or “intellectual understanding isn’t real understanding,” we are being invited to give up reason in exchange for what feels like truth. But the feeling of truth is not the same as the hard work of clarity.
And sometimes, this hunger for centrality shows up in identity. We claim pain, pride, or history as a kind of moral capital. We say “my people” as if that phrase explains everything. And maybe sometimes it does. But when identity becomes a shield against criticism or a weapon against others, it stops being about belonging and starts being about authority—about who gets to speak, who gets to be right, who gets to be seen.
Even reason itself is not immune. We use logic, not only to understand, but to protect ourselves from uncertainty. We argue not only to clarify, but also to win. And slowly, without noticing, we turn the pursuit of truth into a performance of control.
All of this is understandable. The world is confusing. The self is fragile. And deep down, most of us are terrified of being insignificant. We fear being one more nameless voice in the crowd. One more moment in time. One more life that ends and disappears.
So we reach for authority. If we can’t control life, maybe we can control meaning. If we can’t escape time, maybe we can tell a story that lasts. But this, too, is a delusion—one that leads to suffering, to isolation, and to conflict.
Because when everyone is the center of their own story, when every group insists on its own truth, when every insight claims to stand above question—no one listens. No one changes. And no one grows.
But what if we gave up the need to be right, to be central, to be superior?
What if we didn’t need to be grand in order to be real?
What if we could tell stories not to control reality, but to share it?
That would require something more difficult than intelligence. It would require humility. The willingness to be small. To be uncertain. To live without authority and still live meaningfully.
This isn’t easy. Everything in us pushes against it. But perhaps this is the only path that leads us out of performance and into presence. Out of delusion and into clarity. Not the clarity of slogans or doctrine, but the clarity of attention—of seeing without needing to rule over what is seen.
We don’t need to be gods. We don’t need to be heroes. We just need to be human—and to stop pretending that being human isn’t already enough.
*
Annotated Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah: The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1951. (A foundational study on how ideological certainty and group identity can undermine thought, clearing the way for emotional conformity and mass control.)
Beard, Mary: Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. (Explores how images and stories of rulers are crafted to sustain the illusion of divine or inherited authority.)
Frankl, Viktor E.: Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. (Reflects on the will to meaning as a basic human drive, particularly under extreme suffering, showing how narrative can sustain dignity and life.)
Kermode, Frank: The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967. (Examines how people impose beginnings, middles, and ends on chaotic experience, seeking structure through storytelling.)
Nietzsche, Friedrich: On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Carol Diethe. Edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. (Argues that moral systems often arise from resentment and masked power struggles rather than pure virtue or reason.)
Oakeshott, Michael: Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991. (Critiques the rationalist impulse to systematize human life, warning against overconfidence in reason’s ability to master reality.)
Todorov, Tzvetan: Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps. Translated by Arthur Denner and Abigail Pollack. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996. (Offers insight into how identity and morality hold—or collapse—under conditions that strip away illusion, highlighting the limits of narrative.)
Wallace, David Foster: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life. New York: Little, Brown, 2009. (A short meditation on how default thinking shapes our perception and how awareness—not authority—offers a path to freedom.)
Ricardo Morin Infinity 6 12” x 15” Oil and ink on linen 2005
*
Abstract
This reflective essay reconsiders the thought of Jiddu Krishnamurti through the lens of aging and evolving philosophical expectations. While Krishnamurti’s teachings once offered inspiration and a path toward inner freedom, they now appear to dissolve into rhetorical mysticism and incoherence. The essay critiques his rejection of “intellectual understanding” and analyzes the contradictions inherent in his style of spiritual discourse. It argues for the necessity of rational clarity, especially in later stages of life when discernment becomes more valuable than inspiration alone. This shift is presented not as a betrayal of earlier insight, but as its maturation.
“Listening Beyond the Trance: Reassessing Krishnamurti in Later Life”
In my forties and fifties, I found great inspiration in the thought of Jiddu Krishnamurti. His emphasis on freedom from authority, his critique of systems, and his call to radical self-awareness spoke directly to a part of me that sought liberation from inherited dogmas and psychological conditioning. He offered, or seemed to offer, a clarity beyond tradition—a voice that felt both universal and personal.
But now, in my seventies, I find myself rereading his words with a different ear. What once felt revelatory now strikes me as elusive, at times incoherent. A recent passage shared by the Krishnamurti Foundation, drawn from a 1962 public talk in New Delhi, crystallized this shift for me:
“There is no such thing as intellectual understanding; you really only mean that you hear the words, and the words have some meaning similar to your own, and that similarity you call understanding, intellectual agreement. There is no such thing as intellectual agreement – either you understand or do not understand. To understand deeply, with all your being, you have to listen”.
This line of thinking—expressed in varied forms across his oeuvre—once felt like an invitation to presence. Now, I hear it differently: as a kind of rhetorical mysticism that dismisses the very faculties we depend on to make meaning. The claim that “there is no such thing as intellectual understanding” is not merely provocative; it is self-undermining. If words cannot convey meaning through reason, then why speak? Why write? Why gather an audience at all?
Krishnamurti’s sharp dichotomy between “intellectual” and “real” understanding collapses under scrutiny. Intellectual reflection is not merely passive recognition of familiar ideas. It is the groundwork of discernment—of logic, dialogue, and ethical clarity. To discard it is to unravel the very possibility of communication. What he seems to offer instead is a kind of pure, undefinable receptivity—“listening with all your being”—a state left vague, idealized, and unexamined.
This tendency is not unique to Krishnamurti. It is a feature of a broader strand of Indian and global spiritual discourse that wraps itself in the aura of wisdom while resisting the discipline of logic. It blurs the line between paradox and nonsense, invoking transcendence but offering no clear ground. What results is not insight but opacity.
None of this erases what Krishnamurti once offered me. His call to question, to observe without prejudice, helped me unlearn many habits of thought. But inspiration and clarity are not the same. The mind that once needed liberation may later need precision.
We change. What moves us at one stage of life may lose its grip as our questions evolve. That does not make earlier experiences false—it simply means that our standards grow. In listening now, I want something more than the echo of profundity. I want coherence. I want meaning that can stand up to thought.
Krishnamurti taught me to listen. That lesson remains. But now, I listen not only with receptivity—but with reason, with discernment, and with the quiet courage to call abstraction what it is.
*
by Ricardo Morín July 2025
Annotated Bibliography:
Krishnamurti, Jiddu: The First and Last Freedom. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1954. (A collection of early talks that established Krishnamurti’s core ideas; includes his foundational argument against psychological authority and tradition.)
———: Commentaries on Living, First Series. Madras: Krishnamurti Foundation India, 1956. (Brief philosophical dialogues drawn from real encounters; written in prose that oscillates between clarity and metaphysical opacity.)
———: The Awakening of Intelligence. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. (A comprehensive transcript of public discussions and interviews where Krishnamurti expands his rejection of intellectual systems and explores “pure observation.”)
———: The Wholeness of Life. London: Victor Gollancz, 1978. (A late-career synthesis that juxtaposes technological anxiety with inward freedom; his critique of organized thought becomes more abstract here.)
———: Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1987. (Dictated reflections shortly before his death; his rejection of analysis deepens and borders on mysticism, with lyrical but imprecise language.)
———: The Ending of Time: Where Philosophy and Physics Meet. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985. (Conversations with physicist David Bohm; illustrative of Krishnamurti’s dismissal of conventional logic even when in dialogue with a scientist.)
Murti, T. R. V.: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Mādhyamika System. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955. (A key work in Buddhist philosophical reasoning; useful contrast to Krishnamurti in that it pursues dialectical rigor rather than mystical generality.)
Ganeri, Jonardon: Philosophy in Classical India: The Proper Work of Reason. London: Routledge, 2001. (Challenges the stereotype that Indian thought is mystical or anti-rational; highlights traditions that value analysis and inference over insight alone.)
Nussbaum, Martha C.: Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. (Advocates for clarity, rational argument, and intellectual pluralism; offers a counterpoint to Krishnamurti’s anti-intellectualism.)
McGinn, Colin: The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. (A memoir that models the philosophical maturation process; echoes the author’s own shift from inspiration to the pursuit of clarity.)
This story forms part of a narrative triptych alongside In Tenebris [2021] and In Darkness [2022], three pieces that explore the same murder trial through a different angle.
In Tenebris addresses the deliberation from within; In Darkness proposes an open-ended reimagining; Between Law and Conscience returns to the experience from a reflective distance—to examine what the justice system leaves out.
*
The trial took place seven years after the murder.
It was difficult to grasp how something so grave could have waited so long. No weapon had been recovered.The witnesses gave halting, conflicted testimony.The victim had been fourteen when he was shot. The defendant—who looked barely older than twenty at the time of trial—must have been about the same age back then. Both boys, really.What had unfolded in those missing years—before and after—was never addressed.
We were told the crime stemmed from a turf dispute between youth gangs. Not a premeditated act, but a flare of violence born in a world where survival, for some, is its own daily labor. Children—some no older than primary school age—trapped in loops of retaliation, where fear and poverty set the rhythm. None of that—none of what might explain how violence germinates where options vanish—was part of what we were allowed to consider.
There may have been earlier proceedings. Maybe the case began in juvenile court. Maybe there were appeals, delays, witnesses who refused to testify. Or maybe the file just sank, for a time, under the sheer weight of the judicial backlog. By the time we—the jury—entered, none of that background was available to us. Our task was to begin where the case file did: with the event. As if time had left no mark. As if the intervening seven years had not eroded memory or reshaped the young man who now sat before us.
The purpose, formally, was to determine guilt or innocence. But from the outset it felt like we were being asked to apply a blunt question to a situation that resisted such clean edges. This was not just about what had happened—but about what could not be said.
We were instructed to confine ourselves to the evidence. And we tried. But the questions kept tugging—quietly, steadily. How could we not see that this was a killing between teenagers? That it unfolded in a context already stacked against them? How could we not feel that something vital had been left out of the frame?
No one spoke of the defendant’s time in custody—how long he’d waited for trial, whether he’d been offered a plea, or had access to counsel early on. And that expression on his face—unreadable to some, unsettling to others—may have carried traces of confinement, of growing up inside a system that offers little room for grace. I couldn’t know. But I kept wondering.
Despite our best efforts to remain disciplined, the questions kept returning. What chances had that boy really had to escape the fate that claimed him? What might his life have looked like if different choices—his or others’—had been possible earlier? Was it fair, even legal, to weigh his guilt without considering the conditions that had shaped him?
But those thoughts were not admissible. They weren’t in the record. The judge’s instructions were clear: such context, however compelling, was irrelevant to the task before us. Justice, we were told, required a kind of tunnel vision—stripped of background, stripped of time.
So the proceedings followed their course: objections, testimony, forensic accounts, cross-examinations. The weapon was never found. Both the prosecution and the defense had their lapses—moments where arguments frayed or confidence gave way to fatigue. But what lingered wasn’t the strength or weakness of the case. It was the feeling that something essential remained unspoken, unreachable. That the full truth—if such a thing existed—had been sealed off long before we arrived.
Some jurors were ready to decide quickly. For them, the evidence presented was enough to convict. Others, myself included, were less sure—not out of sympathy, but because the case felt incomplete. I kept returning to a quiet unease: were we being asked to judge a person, or only the narrow outline the system permitted us to see?
During deliberations, the tension thickened. One juror said that the defendant’s withdrawn posture looked like guilt. Another saw in it exhaustion. I couldn’t say. But I kept asking myself—what does innocence look like after seven years in pretrial detention? What shape does presence take in someone who has lived under constant suspicion?
On one afternoon, before we adjourned for the day, the youngest among us—barely twenty—spoke up. His voice was low but certain:
“I grew up in a neighborhood too, where you were more likely to be stopped for how you looked than to be seen as someone worth protecting. I don’t know if he did it. But I do know what it feels like to be judged before you understand who you are.”
No one responded. But something in the room changed. The atmosphere softened. Our conversations grew less defensive, more reflective.
It took us nearly three weeks to reach a verdict. Not because the case was complex in a technical sense, but because we all—each of us—had to confront not only the facts but our own expectations of justice. Doubts lingered. The discussions were civil, even quiet, but weighted. It was as if the jury room had become something else—a kind of confessional, where what we revealed was not just about the case, but about ourselves.
I thought of my father, who used to say that justice must be blind, but never deaf. That one must listen for what’s withheld, not just what’s claimed. That memory stayed with me as we signed the verdict: not guilty.
There were quiet cheers from the defendant’s side. The victim’s mother wept. We, the jury, didn’t feel resolution—only the tremor of uncertainty. The judge thanked us for our service. We exited through a narrow corridor, shielded from the public, down a service elevator, then out.
I don’t know what became of him after that. Maybe he disappeared again into the margins of a city that had already marked him. Maybe he tried to begin again. I can’t know. But I do know this: that trial was not only about one act of violence. It was about the quiet violence of exclusion—of what the law, in its procedures, often refuses to see.
And it is that omission—silent, sanctioned, systematic—that places justice itself on the stand.
Writing, silence, and the art of understanding in stillness
*
Ricardo Morín Triangulation 4 22″ x 30″ Graphite on paper 2006
To my sister Bonnie
*
Ricardo F. Morín
June 2025
Oakland Park, Florida
Author’s Note
This reflection was originally drafted before The Ethics of Perception, Part I, yet it belongs to the same inquiry into attention, understanding, and ethical relation.
There are moments when the truest form of intimacy is silence. At other times, it’s the quiet labor of reaching for the right word—however incomplete—that brings us closer. Expression, in this light, is not just a vehicle for communication, but an act of care.
To speak, to withhold, to write, to listen—each choice carries a particular weight. Intimacy lives in these gestures: not in grand declarations, but in the ethics of how we reveal ourselves—and how we receive what another dares to offer. What follows is not a theory, but a reflection on how intimacy appears in expression—and in its absence.
I. Prelude: in the pause between words
It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when something becomes intimate. It isn’t always a touch, or a glance, or even a confession. Sometimes, it’s just a pause—a shared pause—between one word and the next, when both people sense that something true is either about to be said or has just been said, without quite naming it.
Once, sitting face to face, I watched someone I cared for stare silently out the window. I said nothing either. There was no gesture, no disclosure, no clarifying words. And yet the silence didn’t feel empty—it felt full. In that stillness, something passed between us—not a message, not even an understanding, but a kind of permission:
To exist without explanation. To be present without having to perform.
That moment stayed with me not because it was dramatic, but because it was unplanned. I hadn’t expected it, and I couldn’t have recreated it. I only knew, afterward, that I had been in the presence of something rare: an intimacy that asked nothing more than to be.
And yet, not all intimacy is born in silence or in someone else’s presence. Some comes later, through writing—in that long interval between feeling and saying. Some is only possible thanks to the quiet distance that makes reflection possible.
II. What we mean when we say “intimate”
The word intimacy often evokes physical closeness: the realm of touch, proximity, lovers, secrets shared in the dark. But what if intimacy were less about closeness than about permission? The permission to be undefended. To move slowly. To be unclear—and still be trusted.
To be intimate with someone is not merely to be known, but to be seen— seen without the pressure to explain yourself quickly or justify what you feel. It’s an opening, and it’s also a risk: the risk of being misunderstood, and the deeper risk of being understood too well.
Some forms of intimacy unfold face to face. Others require distance. Some happen through dialogue. Others need a single voice, speaking on one’s own in a quiet room.
That’s where writing begins— not as performance, but as a long conversation, uninterrupted.
III. The varieties of intimacy
Intimacy shifts with context, with time, with the shape of the self we bring to another. It is not one thing— not just closeness, or tenderness, or vulnerability— but a set of ways we allow ourselves to be known, and sometimes, to know another.
There’s the intimacy of the body— perhaps the most visible and least understood. It belongs to touch, proximity, the instinctive draw toward another’s presence. But this form can deceive: physical closeness without emotional resonance is common— and easily faked. Yet when body and emotion align, there’s a wordless attunement: a hand resting on a shoulder for just the right amount of time; a breath falling into rhythm without intention.
Then there’s emotional intimacy: the slow courage to say what one feels— not just when it’s beautiful or convenient, but when it’s awkward, incomplete, or raw. This kind of intimacy isn’t given—it’s earned. It may take years, or a single night. Trust lives here—or breaks.
There’s also intellectual intimacy: what arises in conversation when ideas flow without anyone guarding their ground. It’s rare. Most social spaces reward speed, the need to shine, or the safety of politeness. But sometimes, with someone equally curious, thought expands in the presence of the other— not in agreement, but in response. There’s nothing to prove— only the pleasure of discovery. That’s intellectual intimacy. It creates a different kind of closeness— not of feeling, but of perception.
Stranger still is narrative intimacy— the kind that forms not between two people in the same room, but between the one who writes and the one who reads, separated by silence and time. It isn’t immediate— but it isn’t less real. A voice emerges from the page and seems to speak directly to you, as if it knew the contours of your mind. You feel understood—without being seen. You may never meet the person who wrote those words, but something in you shifts. You are no longer alone.
These are not rigid categories. They overlap, interrupt, evoke one another. One may deepen another. Physical presence can create emotional safety. Intellectual closeness can open into unexpected tenderness. And still, each has its own rhythm, its own grammar— and its own risks.
In that complexity, intimacy ceases to be a condition. It becomes a practice: something we learn, lose, revise, and sometimes write when no other form is possible.
IV. Writing as intimacy with oneself (and with another)
Writing, too, is a kind of intimacy— not only with others, but with oneself. Especially when it’s honest— when what’s written is not just clever or correct, but true. That kind of writing doesn’t flatter. It doesn’t argue. It reveals.
We write to bring something forth— not just for an audience, but to hear ourselves think, to see what we didn’t yet know we felt. In writing, we become witnesses to our own consciousness— both its lucidity and its evasions.
We follow a sentence not only for its logic, but for the feeling it carries. And when that feeling falters, we know we’ve lost the thread.
So we begin again, and again— trying not just to explain, but to say something that feels just.
In that sense, writing is an ethical act. It demands attention. It requires patience. It invites us to inhabit our own experience with precision— even when that experience is fragmented or unresolved.
And if we are lucky— if we are honest— something in that effort will reach someone else. Not to impress. Not to convince. But to accompany.
V. When intimacy fails or is refused
Sometimes you reach out—carefully, sincerely—and receive silence, indifference, or a response so misaligned it makes you feel naïve for having tried. Other times, the failure is subtler: a conversation that scatters just as something real begins to take shape—or a listener who hears your words, but not your meaning.
Those moments stay with us. Not because they’re dramatic, but because they remind us how precarious intimacy can be. It can’t be forced—just as humility can’t. Both require a quiet letting go—a willingness to offer something without knowing how it will be received. We can prepare the ground, make the gesture, risk the truth—but the rest depends on the other: their timing, their capacity, their willingness to meet us there.
There’s also the experience of being misunderstood—not just in fact, but in essence. You try to say something that matters, and the other person responds to what they think you said—or to a version of you that never was. It’s a blow— that mismatch between what you tried to share and what actually landed. The desire for intimacy becomes exposure without connection—a wound instead of a bridge.
Sometimes we avoid intimacy not because we don’t want it, but because we fear what it might cost. We’ve been made to feel clumsy—for caring too much, or for being too visible. Or we’ve shared something intimate, only to have it treated lightly—or analyzed without feeling. After that, we grow cautious. We speak less—or in fragments—or not at all.
It’s in the wake of such rejections—large or small—that writing ceases to be mere expression. It becomes repair. Writing allows us to recover what was lost in the moment— to name what never reached its destination, to finish the thought no one waited for, to say it again—this time without interruption, without assumptions, without fear.
And while writing cannot undo the failure of a shared moment, it can offer something else: coherence. A record. A form of truth that endures—even if it wasn’t heard.
In this way, writing becomes a quiet act of insistence—not against the world, but on behalf of the self. It’s a way of saying: What I tried to share still matters—even if it wasn’t received.
VI. The gesture that remains
In the end, intimacy is not a state but a gesture— repeated again and again— toward understanding, toward presence, toward a shared sense that may arrive… or may not.
Sometimes that gesture is a word spoken at the right moment. Sometimes it’s a silence held just long enough for the other to speak. And sometimes it’s the act of writing—solitary, patient, unfinished— offered not to a crowd, but to a single imagined reader who, one day, might need what you are now trying to say.
Writing, at its core, is a form of listening. Not only to others, but to the self that doesn’t rush, doesn’t perform, doesn’t need to persuade.
To the self that waits— that wants to be known not by what it manages to say in quick response, but by what it keeps trying to say with care.
That’s why I return to the page: not because it guarantees connection, but because it keeps the door open. Because in a world that demands speed, certainty, and charm, writing makes room for something slower and more faithful: the long, unfinished gesture of trying to reach someone— perhaps even oneself— with something resonant.
And when intimacy happens—on the page or in life— it’s never because we found the perfect words. It’s because someone stayed. Someone listened. Someone let the moment open—without rushing to close it.
That’s what I’m doing now: writing not to end something, but to leave it open— so that something of greater consequence might enter.
“New York Love Letters” was written in the aftermath of my younger sister’s death. In our early adulthood, as I confronted the certainty of dying from AIDS, I learned of her diagnosis of schizophrenia. Our lives became bonded through different forms of vulnerability and endurance. Her survival became inseparable from my own. Over time, I came to define part of myself through the emotional, intellectual, and material support I provided her. When she died at sixty-nine and I found myself stable at seventy-one, I experienced not only grief, but the loss of a role that had shaped my identity. It was at that moment that writing became a means of survival. What follows emerged from that necessity.
First Letter: How Did I End Up in Manhattan?
I lived in Manhattan from 1982 to 2021, though I hadn’t planned to stay. Initially, it was meant to be temporary—a waiting point before Jurek’s return. But then he told me he was staying in Berlin. His decision, not mine, anchored me in the city. And when I learned that death had taken him, grief replaced waiting, and Manhattan became something else—perhaps a substitute, perhaps a necessity.
We had admired each other. Our conversations shaped me, deepened my understanding of art, and reinforced the creative instincts that guided me. As in every meaningful relationship, our exchanges defined us. He had a profound sense of what high art was, and his perspective challenged me to see beyond my own. Even after he was gone, his influence remained, though absence is a poor companion for inspiration.
Still, I had to find my place within Manhattan—amid its creative currents, its relentless demands, and its contradictions.
My academic foundation had been in fine arts, and I was veering into theater, much as I had years earlier in Venezuela. During the time Jurek and I were together, I moved from the experimental environment of the Art Department at the State University of New York at Buffalo (Bethune Hall) to the world of theatrical conventions at the Yale School of Drama’s Design Department. In between, I traveled with Jurek through Europe and attended set design seminars at the Salzburg International School of Arts.
At Yale’s Design Department welcoming new students, the chairman referred to my arrival as being via Salzburg—a remark delivered amidst what seemed to me like convivial bemusement. It lingered with me for years—whether as admiration or something else, I never fully understood. Instead of questioning the observation, I shifted the conversation to Albert Spaulding Cook’s influence in Buffalo, whose writings had guided my decision to bridge fine arts and theater—shifting from my understanding of what art meant to me to Cook’s particular regard for the designer’s interpretative role in service of the playwright. The response from the group was quick—and revealing. A couple of professors reacted not to my objectives, but to the mention of Cook himself, as they questioned whether he had ever been in Buffalo. I knew perfectly well he had and chose not to argue. Soon enough, I sensed a quiet resistance to ideas that didn’t align with prevailing norms—perhaps a reflection of the school’s priorities, though I never fully determined where I stood within them. After my second year, the chairman inquired if I wished to continue.
For the three years of the Master’s program, I did not find the formal rigor I had expected, yet I stayed the course. My aspirations in the fine arts remained intact, but my footing in the world depended on my role as a set designer—expected to conform to an interpretative craft rather than pursue art on my own terms. The program emphasized adherence to established standards over the cultivation of new approaches, a structure that felt at odds with my own desire to elevate set design—transforming it into an art form capable of standing alongside the finer, more expressive arts rather than relegating it to a supporting role. The principal counselor, of course, would never have admitted this. Whether my approach unsettled him or simply diverged from his expectations, I could never be sure. But I remained guided by instinct rather than precedent, much as I had been drawn to fine arts in the first place. He remained in the position until his late eighties before he died. I sometimes wonder how our arguments sat with him over the years—if they ever did at all.
Second Letter: Ten Years Later.
In Manhattan, the roads of set design and painting intersected, but neither provided stability or clear success. Professional networks seemed in disarray. From Broadway (where I worked as a principal assistant) to the experimental stages of Off-Off-Broadway, the struggle remained the same. Both the personal and professional aspects I found unsettling. Also, these were the years marked by the AIDS crisis, a time that left an indelible mark on me. I navigated these years, though they left their mark.
Walking through the galleries and streets of Manhattan in the 1980s felt like navigating a maze with no exit. There was the buzz of new ideas and the promise of fortune, yet every corner led to another dead end, much like my work in set design. Broadway was a field of intense competition, and Off-Off-Broadway unfolded in forgotten warehouses. Every path and every encounter suggested possibility, but in practice few could sustain themselves within an environment defined by labor precarity, relentless intensity, and limited compensation.
The lack of opportunities to establish myself as a designer mirrored my exclusion from galleries. Both signified exclusion, the denial of a real chance to build a reputation. Some doors never opened, others slammed shut before I could step through. A well-known Broadway designer would often introduce me both as an associate and a great artist, but never allowed me to compete with him. The income I managed to secure was precarious at best. Competition was intense, often driven by commercial interest over cultural ones. In like manner, galleries were run by grifters eager to exploit talent, while artistic directors prioritized profit over innovation. The promise of stardom—even if fleeting—often proved to be unattainable. Survival dictated my choices and forced me to navigate my limitations rather than transcend them.
In a city that constantly reinvented itself, where the streets were painted with the colors of addiction and struggle, it seemed as though no one was ever whole. The fractured sidewalks beneath me reflected my own disjointed ambitions. There were days I couldn’t even recognize the neighborhoods I once called home. In places where life was reduced to survival—where crack vials littered the sidewalks and people stumbled through their days—how could I hope to thrive, let alone create something lasting?
Set design in the world of spectacle was arduous, and the pay was meager—yet I did it out of love for the craft. At one point, a clever producer remarked that enjoying my work as much as I did seemed incompatible with the notion of being compensated for it. Eventually, I turned to commercial design for security; I took on work in film documentaries and the toy industry. But even there, professionalism was no guarantee of respect or fairness. The same challenges persisted. The Actors Fund of America and Visual AIDS provided important support during difficult times; they offered a space to remember those lost and reflect on artistic struggles.
In the early years, Manhattan’s pulse beat through the night in the form of whispered secrets between strangers, drawn together by the need for touch that didn’t require commitment. There was a safety in that anonymity, and yet it was a hollow shield against what I truly sought—something beyond the next fleeting encounter, beyond the walls of a bar or an apartment rented for the night. It was a city where love seemed to evaporate the moment it took form, and independence felt more like isolation than freedom.
As I struggled in the professional world, I found that the absence of fulfillment in my work mirrored the absence of love in my personal life. Both were a reflection of a larger void I had yet to name. Instability extended beyond work. Friendships and love affairs unraveled just as easily. Many friends I had known and loved were lost to AIDS; and deepened my sense of isolation. More than any professional setback, it was the absence of love that left the deepest void. I continued to wrestle with questions of purpose, which remained unresolved after years of reflection. The search for answers became its own struggle—just as illusive as success in a world with high demands.
The smell of decay and the sounds of sirens were never far behind. In neighborhoods where homeless families lived in the shadows of once-glorious buildings, survival came at any cost—whether it was a desperate hand reaching for money or a corner turned into something darker. There was a coldness to the city’s march forward, as if everything was disposable. My art, my efforts, my desires—they all seemed to be tangled in that same vicious cycle of consumption and neglect.
Third Letter: When I Met BBT
BBT’s intellect and honesty shaped my life in ways I didn’t fully grasp at first. I found myself drawn to his company and sought the creative nourishment that seemed lacking elsewhere. At the time, I felt I could withstand the challenges I faced—my health, affected by AIDS, careers that had not fully developed, and relationships that lacked commitment or mutual understanding. Several friends, overwhelmed by their own battles, took their own lives. This period was made worse by a climate that felt stifling and unfulfilling. I still missed Jurek, who had chosen Berlin to die away from me. New York had shown me the complexities of love amidst significant challenges: Indeed, Manhattan was a difficult place to find love and afford a career in the arts, yet it excited me.
Billy kept me from withdrawing completely; he offered both intellectual companionship and a belief in my creative potential.
But it was not always a relationship without tension. At times, Billy’s insistence on structure seemed more a reflection of his own deep-rooted uncertainties than just a call for discipline. I began to see that in his attempts to push me toward mastery, he was navigating his own struggles with self-doubt. We were both in this together—each trying to prove something, not just to the world, but to ourselves. There were moments where I resisted his guidance, and there were moments he resisted mine, but that tension, though uncomfortable, became a part of what kept us connected. In these uncomfortable truths, I realized we weren’t adversaries, but rather fellow travelers, each trying to find our place in a world that didn’t always make sense.
Creativity was my anchor, a means of channeling my energy into something meaningful. In the worst of times, I still found solace in it: A brush against canvas, a sentence coming together—proof that creation, that life itself, was still possible. Painting had been my life companion, but when a mentor from my younger years recently set aside his brushes to write, I wondered:Why couldn’t I? Billy helped me recognize my potential as a writer, a path I had first considered in childhood while listening to my father dictate letters to his secretary. At sixteen, a grammarian told me I was not just a painter but had the potential for a unique voice, though he often struggled to grasp what I was trying to say.
Fourth Letter: The Dark Side
Fifty-one years of struggle and resilience as an immigrant shaped my perspective. My father once called one of my New York apartments unpleasant and vowed never to return. But in that same space, I found moments of connection amidst difficult circumstances.
That contrast never left me: What others saw as squalor, I experienced as a space of potential. Even in tough situations, love found a way to exist.
Manhattan, in its rawness, revealed to me the price of progress and the silence of those left behind. I, too, was a casualty of that silence, wandering through the streets in search of something to fill the spaces that had grown hollow. Manhattan was more than just a backdrop; it was both my adversary and my accomplice. It challenged and sustained me in equal measure. It shaped my struggles, but it also revealed moments of meaning, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Romance came in my forties, an attempt at finding commitment, but it didn’t resonate in the way I hoped. When my sense of autonomy was at risk, I preferred solitude. Silence settled between the walls—a quiet ritual of distance even from my own passions.
Fifth Letter: Validations and Assaults
I remember both validations and assaults, from familiar faces and strangers alike. Yet even in misunderstandings, in accidental encounters—regardless of their nature—I found meaning. I was learning from all of them.
At some point, I wrote a letter to a Cardinal, an attempt to articulate inequity versus victimization within our world. It was an exercise in verbal gymnastics, a way of deciphering the reality I inhabited. Later, I embedded this letter into a composite painting entitled INRI: Its header spelled it out in a collage of one-dollar bills, which I had secured permanently out of fear of defacement.
A museum invited me to take part in a major exhibit celebrating Artists in the Marketplace—but only if I replaced INRI with another painting, one inspired by a fax I had sent a Paris Newsweek correspondent. That fax was a reflection of my concerns—about art, about struggle, and about the very marketplace the exhibit aimed to showcase. The correspondent had replied with a postcard depicting an ancient Egyptian painting of a man being eaten by a mule. A curious response, but fitting in its own way, so i made it part of the painting.
However, I had already committed the Fax painting to a Midtown gallery. I declined the museum’s request unless they agreed to exhibit INRI instead. The museum’s curator hesitated, unable to fully grasp its meaning. In the end, I didn’t participate. Her welcoming remark at the opening was: “You are quite a trooper to attend”—as though showing up despite the situation was an act of perseverance. Yet, perhaps it wasn’t as trivial as it seemed.
Galleries, too, operated within their own opaque structures. They took work on consignment, claiming 40% of the sale price, yet seldom disclosed who the buyers were. One painting I sold vanished into anonymity, with only a vague assurance that it had been “placed well.” There was no contract for the buyer, no record of negotiation beyond a verbal agreement—an arrangement that often left artists vulnerable, dependent on the gallery’s discretion. Selling art, I learned, was as much about trust as it was about how to negotiate talent.
On a different occasion, when a gallery’s partners split they proposed taking my work to London for their new venture. How could I trust them?
There were other two incidents that came to mind, bringing both frustration and a sense of irony. A California production at the Queen’s Kaufman Studios displaced four of my largest format paintings, which I had offered to rent. A co-producer had initially remarked that my paintings appeared to be worth millions, yet the storage staff discarded them. Their negligence took over a year to be compensated with a meager portion of their value, after a prolonged dispute between appraisers. Then, a corporate art advisor sold one of my paintings and failed to pay me the full 60% of the agreed-upon amount. The same volunteer lawyer who represented me allowed her to pay in installments over a year. Yet, had it not been for these events, I would not have been able to cover the costs of experimental drugs not covered by insurance. At one point, my insurance was suspended due to a lack of union contracts, as I was working as a freelancer without union affiliation.
In later years, a gallery in Denmark took interest in signing me up for a two year contract that required producing 20 paintings per month and compensating only for the cost of materials. I said flatly: No, thank you, and the director felt offended at how I negotiated the terms.
Then, I brought 25 years of my paintings back to Venezuela, which are now in storage—though uncertain of their condition, I am willing to let my family sell them at any price, as long as the paintings survive—while the work that evolved 18 years later I sold at auction—starting at $1 a piece.
These moments may seem separate, yet I recognize their connection: My creative choices and my resistance to imposed conditions—were they simply acts of defiance, or did they reveal something deeper? How much of my struggle, my insistence on meaning, and my reluctance to compromise, was tied to the absence of love? Did the absence of love make compromise feel like self-betrayal? Or, how did love (or its absence), shape my perception of validation and rejection?—I still ponder.
Sixth Letter: The Pursuit of Love and Validation
If I have a unique vision as a visual artist, then the opportunities that slipped through my hands were never mine to hold. My hands had nothing to do with that conflict. It was my destiny.
The circuitous nature of experience—the way despondency transforms into art, how a fax of despair or a letter becomes a painting—reminds me that creation and loss have always been intertwined. Manhattan wasn’t just a backdrop; it provoked, shaped, and at times, even dictated meaning.
Much reflection on the past is nothing more than an exercise in futility. Destiny reminds us how determined our lives are by incomprehensible forces. Agency, with regard to what has already occurred, can feel like an illusion. We live in an age of disbelief and speculation, where distrust and conflagration cohabit with the hysteria of minds seeking certainty in uncertainty. For these minds, life becomes a tool of gossip and an affirmation of fear. These are minds of prejudice and selfishness, incapable of conceiving of a future that does not align with their own discomforts. It is a syndrome of obscurantism, where paranoia and reactionary fear prevail over reason. Epistemological confinement reinforces a state in which contradictions are dismissed rather than examined, and doubt is exploited as evidence of conspiracy. It is the rejection of complexity in favor of dogma, an attachment to certainty that turns ignorance into conviction and speculation into doctrine. We do not change the past by dissecting it—we only sharpen our awareness of how little control we had in the first place. Balancing uncertainty is a fool’s errand. The only grace of dignity left to us mortals is in accepting our limitations—not as defeat, but as clarity. There is no contradiction in that acceptance. If anything, it allows for a different kind of agency—not in altering what was, but in deciding how to exist within what remains.
My story isn’t only about the pursuit of love but about what love—whether found, lost, or absent—left in its wake. Creativity was never separate from longing; it emerged from it, filled its voids, and, in some ways, became love’s most enduring form.
Perhaps these connections don’t need to be stated outright. They exist in the spaces between—between art and survival, between the lives I intersected with and those who vanished, between the city that bruised me and the city that made me.
Seventh Letter: David
When I finally met David, my husband, my life began to shift. We have now been together for twenty-five years, ten of them married. Before I met him, I had already resigned myself to the idea that being a couple was not possible. Then I discovered that he loved me truly and understood me with great depth. Without intending to, his love healed every emotional scar and freed me from obsession. His love allowed me to discover a stillness that I can return to in an instant—just as I always did before, but now we shared it. Even when challenged by life’s vicissitudes, I am assured of one thing: I am loved—loved in a pure, soulful way.
But love is not an act of erasure, nor is it simply the inverse of longing. The temptation to see my life in contrast—to say that struggle preceded love, that absence defined its arrival—feels, in some ways, like an illusion. Contrast can make meaning vivid, but it can also distort it. It can create division where there should be unity. I have learned that love does not invalidate the past; it reveals it in fuller detail. What came before was not an empty prelude to David’s presence. It was real, lived, and filled with its own weight.
My story isn’t a simple arc from darkness to light. It’s more like a series of echoes, where past and present constantly inform each other. The creative energy of silence—something I can return to in an instant—suggests a kind of equilibrium. It was always there, alongside my struggles. David’s love didn’t create it, but gave me the trust to fully inhabit it.
That distinction is crucial. If I were to define my happiness now in opposition to my past, I would be committing the same error that shaped much of my younger years—seeking meaning through contrast rather than through presence. The anchoring point I found in David’s love does not stand against what came before, but within it. Love does not negate struggle; it allows struggle to exist without consuming everything else.
Though the world is filled with imperfections and uncertainties, love transcends them—not as a counter-force, but as something capable of holding contradictions without dissolving them into opposites. Struggles don’t diminish the richness of one’s life; they give it texture, depth. And fulfillment, I now understand, is not found in simple resolutions but in the trust we cultivate. Love does not divide. It does not draw lines between before and after. It does not make meaning contingent upon contrast. Instead, it allows everything to exist at once, in the same breath.
My career in art and set design has followed its own path—one of persistence rather than mass recognition. My work has been exhibited, supported, and studied, but its true measure is in its endurance.
*
Ricardo Federico Morín Tortolero
February 21, 2025; Oakland Park, Florida
~
Author’s Note:
For those interested in the professional trajectory behind the experiences shared in New York Love Letters, the following Appendix provides a brief overview of my work in fine arts and set design.
Appendix
Fine Arts:Ricardo Morín, born in Venezuela (1954), has been exhibited in both solo and group shows, and has received support from Visual AIDS and the Venezuelan government. Morín has also collaborated on a multidisciplinary art/anthropology research project and worked as an adjunct professor at Pratt Institute. For more detailed information, visit https://ricardomorin.com/Bio.html
Set-Design:Ricardo Morín has worked as both principal set-design assistant for Broadway designers of musicals, dramas, and ballets and as an independent designer for various Off-Off Broadway plays and musicals.For more detailed information, visit https://ricardomorin.com/PDF/Theater-Resume.pdf
Silent Diptych by Ricardo Morín Medium: Oil On Linen Size: 18 by 28 by 3/4 inches Year: 2010
~
*
Prologue
Silent Diptych is not an illustration but a resonance—a meditation on silence, not as emptiness, but as a state of receptivity. It is the space where judgment dissolves, where human connection lingers between words, where meaning is felt rather than spoken. In its stillness, it holds what remains unresolved. Some silences are quiet. Others are filled with history.
RFMT
~
*
Our early dinner followed a matinee of “Parade”, a musical steeped in history, in indignity, in the weight of a life taken and a verdict that still hung unresolved. At the table, we spoke of Leo Frank, the Jewish man lynched in Georgia a century ago–pardoned decades later but never absolved.His true killer never pursued.
Three of us were Jewish. They understood, in ways the rest of us could only acknowledge but never quite embody, the particular pain of being made a scapegoat. The others sympathized but could not feel the same alienation—not in the marrow, not in the inherited way history imprints itself on some more than others.
It was a conversation of weight, but not of sorrow. We spoke with the clarity that comes when facts are long settled but their reverberations remain.
Then came the interruption.
The woman at the next table turned to us with a question, her voice cutting easily through our discussion.
“Where are the girls?”
I glanced at my companions, the six of us settled comfortably into the familiarity of one another.
“What girls?” I asked, not unkindly.
She blinked, as if expecting the answer to be self-evident.
“We’re already married to each other,” I said.
She turned away without another word.
There was no need to dwell on it. The moment was familiar. A minor encounter, the sort that barely registered after years of knowing exactly how the world could tilt in response to our presence.
To shift the conversation, I said, “Freud might say that all relationships are attempts to resolve unfinished business with our parents.”
Someone smirked. A fork was set down. A momentary silence, not of discomfort, but of consideration.
“Men with their fathers, women with their mothers,” I continued.
The responses were mixed. Agreement. Deflection. A shift in tone. Some spoke of failing to meet their fathers’ expectations. Some spoke of hatred. Some of detachment. Some of nothing at all.
I mentioned my father. His certainty that we, his children, would not know how to survive without him. He meant economically, of course. His generation had its own understanding of what it meant to endure.
“How many siblings do you have?” someone asked.
“Five,” I said. “Including my younger sister, who just passed away.”A pause.“She was angelic.”“Sixty-nine.”
There was sympathy, warm and immediate. A moment held just long enough.
And then, as if on cue, the conversation shifted—easily, instinctively. To theater. To Tony Awards. To the life and talent of voices long gone but forever recorded.
At the next table, the woman was laughing now, the moment between us already forgotten on her end.
And we, too, were laughing—at something lighter, something that did not ask to be examined too closely.
The moment stayed, unnoticed, but not forgotten.
~
*
Epilogue
Like the painting, the moment lingered—not demanding resolution, but waiting, quietly, to be understood. The weight of history, the subtleties of belonging, the pauses in conversation where truth is felt but not spoken. Silence, in the end, is never empty. It is the space where everything remains.
Pendular Ricardo Morín, Watercolor, and ink on paper 14” x 20″ 2003
*
Prologue
The Quiet Turning
In the fading light of a world obsessed with spectacle, she endures—not as a relic of past sacrifices, but as a living, evolving force. The desire for attention has always been a double-edged sword in her life: both a demand imposed by a society fixated on appearances and a tool she has learned to wield with fierce determination. Every public gaze, every moment magnified by the glare of expectation, has shaped her journey and molded not only her destiny but also that of the visionary she helped nurture.
She does not merely recall the weight of expectation; she transforms it. Her life is not a static ledger of sacrifices but a dynamic chronicle of adaptation—of a woman whose responses shift with time, whose convictions evolve with every challenge, and whose internal conflicts are as fluid as the changing tides of public adulation. There were moments when the burden of spectacle pressed heavily upon her, yet she never allowed it to define her entirety. Instead, she learned to let the circumstances speak and allowed the ever-changing world to refine her purpose.
In a culture where every gesture is scrutinized and every act measured by its ability to capture the spotlight, she chose to forge an authenticity that defies constant performance. Amid the relentless pursuit of recognition, she discovered that resilience is not about enduring static hardships but about embracing change—to be both the guiding light when needed and the adaptable spirit who reinvents herself as life demands.
Her legacy is woven into the very fabric of the visionary’s rise, yet it is not confined to the ephemeral glow of public applause. It lives in the decisions yet to be made, in the quiet defiance against a world intent on reducing complex lives to mere performances. As the storm of public attention recedes, one truth remains: while the spectacle may return with renewed fervor, so too will her unyielding, ever-shifting light—ever responsive to the world, ever true to her evolving self.
~
*
Chapter 1
The Origins of Strength
She was not born into privilege, nor was she shaped by an easy path. Strength, in her world, was not inherited—it was constructed, piece by piece, through necessity, through the quiet urgency of survival. The home she knew was one of expectations, where resilience was not a virtue but a requirement.
Her parents, figures of discipline and quiet ambition, did not speak of success in terms of indulgence or grandeur. They spoke of perseverance, of self-sufficiency, of the kind of fortitude that does not wait for the world’s permission. The values they instilled in her were not gentle reassurances but firm, unwavering truths: that beauty alone is fleeting, that intellect is a tool to be sharpened, that hard work is the currency of progress.
The first adversities she faced were not singular, dramatic upheavals, but the steady, relentless challenges of making oneself indispensable in a world that often overlooks those who do not demand attention. She learned early that admiration is conditional, that approval must be earned again and again, and that the only certainty lay in one’s ability to adapt.
Beyond the walls of her upbringing, the world around her was shifting. The socio-economic landscape offered few guarantees, especially for a woman determined to carve her own space. Success was not simply a matter of talent or intelligence—it was a performance, a negotiation, a test of endurance. The weight of expectation pressed upon her from all sides: to conform, to excel, to be both formidable and gracious, independent yet admired.
Yet, she did not recoil from these pressures; she absorbed them, studied them, and found within them a rhythm she could move to. While others saw obstacles, she saw opportunities to refine her instincts, to wield resilience not as a defense, but as a weapon. Every closed door was a lesson in persistence. Every rejection, a refinement of her strategy.
She did not yet know what shape her life would take, nor could she have predicted the enormity of the path ahead. But one truth had already taken root: survival was not enough. If she was to endure, she would do so on her own terms.
~
*
Chapter 2
A Woman in a Man’s World
She learned quickly that talent alone was not enough. In a world where men dictated the terms of power, a woman had to be twice as prepared, twice as composed, twice as relentless. Her ambitions did not align neatly with the roles assigned to her—not the ones whispered by tradition, nor those imposed by an industry that measured a woman’s worth by the fleeting currency of youth and allure.
Her career was not handed to her; it was negotiated, fought for in spaces where her presence was tolerated but not welcomed. She had to navigate the subtle dismissals, the unspoken ceilings, the expectation that she should be grateful for whatever space she was allowed to occupy. To be assertive was to risk being labeled difficult. To be strategic was to be called calculating. And yet, to be anything less was to disappear.
But she would not disappear.
The spectacle was always present, shaping her choices as much as her ambitions. Visibility was power, and she understood that better than most. She learned to wield attention, to control the narrative before it controlled her. If she was to succeed in a man’s world, she had to become more than just competent—she had to be seen.
Yet, the gaze was fickle. It admired strength but punished defiance. It celebrated beauty but scorned aging. It permitted ambition, but only if it did not overshadow the ambitions of men. She walked this tightrope daily: she adjusted, adapted, and never allowed herself the luxury of complacency.
Independence was her quiet rebellion. Every choice she made—where she worked, whom she trusted, how she carried herself in a room—was a declaration. The tension between expectation and desire was relentless. The world wanted her to conform, to soften, to submit. But she had already seen what submission offered: silence, erasure, irrelevance.
So she carved her own space, one decision at a time. She played the part when necessary, and knew when to perform, when to retreat, when to push forward. But beneath the careful facade was a woman who refused to be reduced to an image.
She had become part of the spectacle, but she was also its master.
~
*
Chapter 3
The Birth of a Titan
She did not set out to shape a legend. She set out to prepare a child for a world that did not bend easily, a world that would test him, discard him if he faltered. She had seen enough to know that brilliance alone was not enough—resilience was the true currency of survival. And so, she became both the architect and the adversary, the foundation upon which he would build and the force that would push him to withstand the weight of expectation.
Her guidance was a paradox: fiercely protective, yet unsparing. She did not indulge fragility, though she understood its presence. There were no idle comforts, no assurances that the world would be kind. Instead, she instilled an unshakable creed—one did not wait for permission to take up space; one carved it, owned it, refused to apologize for it.
But strength, once given, takes on a life of its own. She watched as he absorbed her lessons, sometimes with gratitude, sometimes with defiance. He was not a child who followed; he was one who questioned, who tested the limits of every rule, including hers. He did not always see the wisdom in her distance, the purpose behind her expectations. To him, love should have been softer, less conditional.
She knew better.
The spectacle had already begun to shape him, as it had shaped her. Attention became both validation and weapon, which sharpened his confidence and his restlessness. He saw the world not as something to navigate, but as something to master. And yet, she wondered—had she given him too much certainty? Had she fortified him so well that he no longer knew how to doubt, to hesitate, to seek counsel outside himself?
There were moments when she questioned. In the rare silences between them, in the brief flickers of vulnerability he quickly buried, she wondered if she had built not just a titan, but a fortress—one that would one day struggle to let anything in.
She told herself it was necessary. That the world had no use for the unprepared. That he would thank her in time.
And yet, as she watched him step further into the glare of the spectacle, as the weight of his own myth grew heavier, she could not shake the quiet thought that gnawed at the edges of her certainty:
Had she given him everything except the ability to stop?
~
*
Chapter 4
Sacrifice and Distance
She had always known he would leave. It was, after all, what she had prepared him for—to move forward with unrelenting momentum, to step beyond the boundaries of what was known, to belong not to a single place or person, but to the vision that consumed him. And yet, knowing did not make it easier.
At first, the distance was practical, a byproduct of ambition. His world expanded at a pace hers could not match, each success widened the space between them. Conversations became brief, punctuated by time zones and obligations, his voice measured, always moving toward the next thing. He spoke in ideas, in projects, in revolutions yet to come. Rarely did he speak of himself.
But distance is rarely just physical. She saw it in the way he carried himself, in the careful detachment of his gaze when the cameras were on him. The spectacle had fully claimed him now—not just as an audience but as an identity. Attention was no longer something he sought; it was something he commanded, something he wielded. He had become larger than life, and in doing so, he had begun to shrink the parts of himself that did not serve the myth.
She recognized the toll, though he would never name it. The weight of scrutiny, the exhaustion of living up to a persona that left no room for hesitation, for frailty, for uncertainty. He was brilliant, polarizing, untouchable—an architect of impossible things. But he was also her son. And that was the one role he no longer had time to play.
She had always understood sacrifice. She had made her own, time and time again, choices that had cost her comfort, companionship, a quieter kind of life.But she had not anticipated this: the realization that her greatest success—his unshakable independence—had also made her dispensable.
She would not chase him. She had taught him to walk alone, and she would not contradict that lesson now. Instead, she watched from afar, her pride and her sorrow intertwined, knowing that he was too far gone to look back, but she still hoped—one day—he might.
~
*
Chapter 5
Shadows and Echoes
She was no longer a presence in his world, but her shadow remained. It stretched across his decisions, his mannerisms, the unspoken rules he followed even as he pretended they were his own. She saw it in the way he carried himself in a room—how he mastered attention, held silence just long enough for discomfort to become intrigue. He had learned that from her.
Yet, influence is a slippery thing. Once released into the world, it takes on a life of its own; it bends and reshapes itself in ways the originator never intended. She wondered, at times, if he had misunderstood her lessons or if she had failed to articulate them well enough. Had she armed him with resilience or simply taught him to endure at any cost? Had she instilled vision or merely a hunger for dominance?
She had always believed in independence, in the power of carving one’s own path. But watching him now—uncompromising, relentless, willing to set fire to bridges before anyone could cross them—she questioned whether she had emphasized too much the need to stand apart, and not enough the importance of standing with.
And yet, despite his defiance, he could not fully sever what bound them. She glimpsed traces of her voice in his words, echoes of her own battles in the way he faced down adversaries. He may have long since left her behind, but he carried fragments of her wherever he went.
Still, influence is not ownership. She had shaped him, but she did not control him. The choices he made were his own, and she had no claim over them—neither the triumphs nor the failures. She could only watch, aware that what she had given him was both foundation and burden, a blueprint he had long since altered to fit a design only he could see.
And so, she did what all who shape the future must eventually do: she let go and knew that her presence in his life was no longer defined by proximity, but by the weight of what had already been left behind.
~
*
Epilogue
The Silent Architect
She was never the one at center stage. That was never her role, never her desire. And yet, in the hushed spaces between history’s grand pronouncements, she remained—unseen but undeniable, a force imprinted on the architecture of a life that reshaped the world.
There is a certain power in being forgotten. The world rarely remembers the hands that steady the foundation, only the ones that raise the monument. But she had never needed recognition to know her presence endured. She saw it in the echoes of her words, in the contours of a mind sharpened by her lessons, in the restless ambition that had been, at least in part, her doing.
Yet power, she had learned, is not a gift—it is an affliction, a hunger that grows even as it devours. She had taught him to reach, to question, to never yield to the weight of convention. But had she, in doing so, unleashed something beyond even her understanding? He had become an architect of the future, but was he building a world of brilliance or ruin? Had she given him wings, or simply made him blind to the ground beneath him?
The burden of vision is that it rarely allows for stillness. She had spent her life in motion, forged her own path, and demanded her own place. But now, standing at the edges of a world that no longer looked back at her, she allowed herself a moment of pause. Not to claim victory, nor to lament what could not be undone, but simply to acknowledge what was.
Love and legacy are rarely pure. They are made of sacrifice and silence, of pride and regret, of truths that remain unspoken. She had played her part, and though the stage belonged to another, she knew the script still bore traces of her hand.
And so she stepped back, into the quiet. Not erased, not forgotten—simply unseen. The architect, no longer needed, but always present in the walls of what had been built.
~
*
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction. While inspired by the complexities of ambition, legacy, and the forces that shape extraordinary lives, the characters and events depicted are products of imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, alive or deceased, is purely coincidental. This story is not an account of any individual but rather an exploration of the universal tensions between sacrifice, power, and the silent architects behind great destinies.
Ricardo MorínAscension, CGI, 2005 by Ricardo Morín
Introduction
Power, in its rawest form, bends and distorts. It reflects the body depicted in Ascension as it strains against the scaffolding of control—and embodies the turbulent forces we inhabit.[1] These elements frame a reflection not only on Venezuela’s struggles but on the universal gravity of power that entraps us all. I wonder if blaming these forces oversimplifies a system thriving on collective complicity. Can self-compassion hold us accountable without succumbing to guilt—when despair paralyzes?
Positioned between The Stream of Emery, a fable of renewal, and Unmasking Disappointment, an upcoming essay on historical reckoning, this story continues a journey through entanglement, responsibility, and the enduring search for self-liberation.[2]
~
THE FETTERS OF POWER
I
While my husband drove from Fort Lauderdale to Orlando, I had a conversation with my friend BBT. It was one of those unsettling conversations that reveals how vast forces can overwhelm us. He spoke of power, not as a tool, nor even as a desire, but as the primal force that pushes humanity toward authoritarian oligarchies. Greed, according to him, is secondary, a symptom of something deeper: the irresistible gravity of power itself.
II
I thought of Michel Foucault and his theories on power, and for a moment, I felt a flash of clarity. But the more I tried to articulate his ideas, the more inadequate they seemed. The weight of reality crushes academic musings as the world descends into ruin. We fail to recognize ourselves as creatures trapped by our own errors.
III
Then, I remembered my cousin Ivelisse’s voice, trembling while holding back tears, as she recounted Nicolás Maduro’s inauguration, January 10. For her, it was not just a political event; it was a symbol of our fall, of our dissolution as a people. Her despair was mine, and ours was Venezuela’s—a nation habitually entrusting faith in saviors who never arrive.
IV
Across the world, power and greed—legitimized by crime or not—justify the rise of tyranny. And we, in our confusion, have no answers in the face of these tides of unchecked ambition.
V
BBT, ever pragmatic, said simply: “Just enjoy yourself.” His advice both stung and comforted me. But how could I? How could I enjoy anything when the world feels so fragile?Every thought circles back to the same questions: What can I do to counteract these forces? How can I make sense of this struggle?
VI
Still, I cling to one belief: that one day, a collective awakening will emerge, a rising tide of awareness. If there is to be a better world, it will not come from saviors or struggles for power, but from an alignment of minds and hearts. My role, if I have one, is to contribute to that legacy—not for fame or ambition, but for peace.
VII
Peace is what I seek, not only for myself but for others: a legacy that transcends my own life, one that serves as a quiet resistance to the forces of greed and power. Only then, perhaps, will I find the simplicity BBT spoke of—not as surrender, but as understanding.
Postscript
It is easy to lose sight of the deeper currents that drive us, particularly when we are immersed in the tides of ambition, power, and cynicism. In moments of crisis, these forces surge, often obscuring our judgment and steering us off course. Yet, amidst their overwhelming presence, one truth remains: surrendering to love sustains us.
Ultimately, what really matters is love.It alone sustains us above all else.It can anchor us against the forces that threaten to lead us astray.
Perhaps with that recognition is where peace begins—not in the world outside or its lack of validation, but in the quiet acceptance of what we can change, and what we cannot.
The ‘I’ believes in pleasure, laughter, good food, sex. The ‘I’ believes in itself, sometimes it is proud of itself but sometimes ashamed of itself. Who does not carry the stain of shame, a faux pas, a lost opportunity that, just remembering them, cures us of the threatening hubris of believing ourselves, in Mexican terms, the mero mero, the cat’s meow, the king of the forest, the bee’s knees?
Carlos Fuentes, This I Believe: An A-Z of a Writer’s Life; The I. p. 315. Bloomsbury Publishing, London; Translated by Kristina Cordero, Copyright 2004.
*
INTRODUCTION:
Writing for me is the result of reasoning through experience, sifting agenda whether mine or those of others. In shaping my narratives, the process inevitably extends long beyond the scope of a story. I cannot define my emotions unless I have spent time examining them. Unlike a professional journalist, on purpose I avoid writing on commission or for any kind of financial gain. For a few years now, owing to the Covid Pandemic, I have substituted writing for my brushes and painting studio. Spontaneity defines these narratives just as it had my abstract paintings. I struggle for disinterestedness: a universality intrinsic to every work of art.
Thus, a narrative’s introduction is ironically an epilogue. Initially, the conversation taking place between David and me had not been set. It is through the course of this cruise that evocations are gleaned from the past. They are our way of understanding ourselves as spouses.
This exploration of the West Indies and the Caribbean held des énigmes. For us, it was the exploration of an unknown continent. Among these southern lands resided that Little Venice[Venezuela], the source of my current distress: Why did I have to leave there a half century ago for a frigid Western New York? This story illustrates both my father’s culture and my own perspective.
In the mutability of time, confessions seek understanding. Memory comes from/out of habit, opinion, desire, pleasure, pain, and fear. Each manifests a change. Like jetsam in times of distress each one of these resurfaces, though not preserved, but transformed into something new. The succession of worn-out ideas is an act of replacement.
A wanderer’s hope and prayers I add for those left behind. In pondering these memories, I examine my own validity and ambiguities. This reliquary of contradictions stands between intuition and fact. I seek the readers’ empathy as a transition.
Each alliance of loyalty between fact and intuition can place us in a better universe. It is our beliefs that the human spirit can rise above life’s vicissitudes.
Here, I wish to include special thanks to Professor Andrew Irving, Ph.D., head of the Department of Anthropology, University of Manchester, England, for his generous support and guidance. I have known Andrew for the past 26 years, and once I had the opportunity to collaborate on a research project, entitled The Art of Life and Death: Radical Aesthetics and Ethnographic Practice (2017). Since before the publication of my WordPress’s web page Observations on the Nature of Perception (Visual Art, Aesthetic Plasticity, and a Free Human Mind) – a repository for short stories published as of 2008 – I had already shared with him a number of testimonials on aesthetics, which became crystalized in my post Acts of Individual Talent(2009). These had evolved over our conversations in the course of thirteen years, starting in 1997 since we met for the first time:
Ricardo realized that the true measure of a painter is the making of art despitethe obstacles and challenges one has to endure. Ricardo was particularly motivated by the fact that there have been innumerable artists whose accomplishments did not depend on engaging with the marketplace. He was drawn to “all the great works by anonymous artists from Greek and Roman Antiquity, that were plundered, destroyed, and stigmatized during the Dark Ages,” as well as Cézanne, who endured forty years of obscure labor before landing a first one-man-show, and Van Gogh, whose sublimely “outsider” creations were only recognized after his death. For Ricardo, the term “outsider art” often denotes a prejudice toward individuals perceived to be riddled by some sort of physical or psychological health impairment. As such, both academia and the art establishment tend to divide art on the basis of its cultural import or through an underlying bias that Ricardo suggests evolves according to market demands. Another term is folkloric art, deemed to refer to the art of the colonies or the cultural heritage of a nation, which is associated with ideas of shared roots and lived experiences. “Are these terms in some way similar or different from the issues involved in art produced during the struggle over chronic or terminal disease?” Ricardo asked after reading this chapter, “and while the notion of mutuality is essential to understanding the shared human condition, can it also help to expand sensibilities about understanding human expression in an interdisciplinary scientific context, bound by the myriad circumstances that may engulf human pathos besides biology, be it in sociological survival to fit in or as an effort to therapeutically survive a chronic or terminal disease?” Ricardo’s response and analysis continued: “There is great intelligence in the creative efforts made by the human mind to survive any circumstance. Besides, it is undeniable that bodily pain and mental pain are ubiquitous in life, be it one of privilege or alienation. The logical concepts of cognitive science with averages, classifications, and algorithms will serve no other purpose than to provide a mere approximation to understanding the complexity of human expression, its diversity, heterogeneity, and inenarrable nature. Can we really come to understand the ways in which different modes of inner expression – such as people’s ongoing interior dialogues, un-articulated moods, imaginative life-worlds, and emotional reveries – if they remain hidden beneath the surface of public activities, hence hidden from research? Ultimately, that which is mystical about the cycle of life and death may not be elucidated by a tactical approach, but through a profound introspection that is very difficult to articulate.” In 2008, Ricardo was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, a cancer associated with AIDS that affects white blood cells and can emerge when the immune system is weakened for prolonged periods. Throughout his illness, chemotherapy treatment,and convalescence, Ricardo spent many months sitting in silence in his chair. Beds and chairs are often dynamic sites of thought, expression, and memory for people living with an extended period of illness, whose thinking ranges freely across the past, present, and future. People remain thinking and speaking beings even when lying or seated in silence for long periods and may be negotiating critical issues, dilemmas, and decisions regarding treatment, work, or faith and be engaged in emergent streams of interior dialogue, thought, and emotion. It was during this state, which Ricardo describes as one of “high inertia” that he came to recognize the simplicity, power, and aesthetics of silence, especially “when compared with all the noise and visual cacophony of the tangible world at large.” Of course, a silence is never simply a silence. Different days are mediated by different silences; an uncertain silence, a good silence, a heroic silence, a surreal silence, a painful silence. A silence can contain the faces of the people closest to you, thoughts of suicide, images of the world outside, daydreams, and future-orientated life projects. After months of dwelling in silence, Ricardo wrote a “Manifesto of Silence” to help him think through and articulate his thoughts. It begins as follows: “The verbalization of an aesthetic reality implies its own death; no matter how precise, its very accuracy of words resists the magnitude of that reality. It is found in the open space of silence, in the virtuous stillness of a meditative contemplation, in the freedom itself of the known, free to observe with a heightened attention, where questions are unnecessary and responses trivialize the very observation.” After finishing the chemotherapy, Ricardo came down with severe tendonitis, which meant he no longer had the requisite strength to stretch canvases in order to paint. Consequently, when he started painting again he did so on hanging scrolls. Ricardo came to understand the scroll material and how it behaved in its simplest of terms and in relation to his own physical limitations. Between 2009 and 2010, Ricardo started to work on a scroll series called Metaphors of Silence, in which “it was this incidental simplicity of the medium of scrolls and my empathy for the nature of silence that produced the subject matter.”
When I last revised my post Acts of Individual Talent in 2020, I concluded: What use would creativity or intellect be to us without compassion?, would we not need to assess our system of valuation, perhaps even our own cultural rationality?
More recently, on February 3, 2023, Andrew and I also had a long discussion via Zoom, which was based on my WordPress post Meditations on Ortega y Gasset(2022). At that time, he provided a critical analysis with extensive bibliography, which, he felt, would enhance my perspective about the Enlightenment and its limitations.
Furthermore, I extend my gratitude to my friend and editor for the past 36 years, Billy Bussell Thompson, Ph.D., professor emeritus, Hofstra University, Department of Romance Languages. It is thanks to Billy that I remain hopeful in developing my skills as a writer.
Fort Lauderdale, March 24, 2023
*
Plato’s Symposium: Diotima on the wisdom of love.
–– “So do not be amazed if everything honors by nature its offshoot; for it is for the sake of immortality that this zeal and eros attend everything.”
— “ . . . in as much as in the case of human beings, if you were willing to glance at their love of honor, you would be amazed at their irrationality, unless you understand what I have said and reflect how uncanny their disposition is made by their love of renown, ‘and their setting up immortal fame for eternity’; and for the sake of fame even more than for their children, they are ready to run all risks, to exhaust their money, to toil at every sort of toil, and to die.” [Location p. 37, 207a-208]
Plato’s Symposium: a translation by Seth Bernardete with commentaries by Allen Bloom and Seth Bernardete, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
*
I
Clouds loomed, as if mountains, over the horizon. From the balcony of our stateroom, we watched the wake’s effervescent whiteness. Gulls pierced rolling waves and cawed their disputes.
II
Our travels across the Bahamas and along the coasts of Central America had begun five days ago on the Eurodam. On January 4th we had left Fort Lauderdale. Already we have passed by north of Cuba and and south of Hispaniola. Now, we are approaching Aruba, a mere 76 miles from Venezuela. A pilot boat will guide us to moorage. But a fire alarm has gone off, and the stench of diesel permeates the air. A few minutes later the captain announces: Everything has been brought back to normal. The emergency has been aborted.
III
David and I are speaking; emergency lights are still flashing.
It’s been fifty years since I left. I was 17.
IV
We disembark in Oranjestad.
Eighty-five years today my parents were ostracized from Germany. Five years later they married in the United States, where they lived happily until their deaths.
For my parents, leaving the country was never an option and their marriage was unhappy.
Did you ever come with them to Aruba?
Only as a child.
V
How was your relationship with them at that time?
My parents emphasized independence. For me they were a bridge to the country, still. They understood I had to go abroad. There was no other choice. From my love for them, ties to Venezuela have never wavered. Our proximity now, however, elicits no nostalgia, only recollections. I do care, though.
VI
You must have some memorable moments from then?
Camping out with the Boy Scouts on the Andean plateau. That honed my vision.
Anything else?
I remember the ashrams of the Universal Fraternity. There were monks, followers of Serge Raynaud de la Ferrière (in Valencia, Maracay, and Caracas). I frequented all three of them, during the summers. These ashrams schooled its attendees in a mixture of natural sciences and Buddhism: For me this was more stimulating than listening to church sermons, with their evocations of sin and the shadows of shame. That’s when I began yoga and meditation.
What impressed you the most?
I was drawn by the emphasis in self-denial. But I disliked being dependent on other people. I just wanted to expand beyond myself.
VII
In those years, I was attached to nothing in particular. Was I a dilettante?
You were inquisitive; it was a time for discovery.
I went to seminars on musicology; I took German lessons; it was a time for Hesse, Kafka, Gibran, Thoreau’s Walden, and Skinner’s Walden Two.
VIII
I read, but unsystematically. I liked philosophy, history, painting, and writing, but I wasn’t yet dedicated. Only slowly, did it all become part of me.
These things awakened your spirit.
I was free from obligations and they expressed my relationship to the world.
You were learning to be original. You sought your own voice. You didn’t mimic other people.
The more I felt, the greater my involvement. It was just a way to express myself. I wasn’t looking for success, or distraction.
IX
We disembarked and walked over to the shopping malls. From Main Street we veered into the side ones. On both sides, most storefronts were boarded up. The façades showed signs of a better time, perhaps, from when Venezuelans were flamboyant. Now only makeshift stands crowded the sidewalk, manned by folk with a distinctive Venezuelan lilt: In friendly conversation, the word marico floated amongst them.
Papá once watched me sitting on the curb of a street next to an old watchman who worked for us on weekends and was known for having an unpredictable temper. The watchman awaited my family’s departure to the city. I had often befriended him, peppering him with questions. Later, Papá said I was the only person who related to this man.
Your resilience was your best attribute.
X
In the late sixties, our family hosted the daughter of Venezuela’s President Rómulo Betancourt, Virginia. She and her husband stayed in one of our houses in Valencia. At that time, Virginia Pérez was the head of the National Library in Caracas. I was thirteen and Papá asked me to take my paintings from the rooms where the guests were staying. According to him they were out of place. One day, after having finished lunch, I brought a framed watercolor over to Virginia and began to speak. My father objected, but she said, disavowing him: “No, please, leave him alone.” I continued: “It shows the spirit of a young man in search of freedom.” Sweetly she responded: “I like your way of thinking; I want to hear more.” Words now failed me.
(David chuckling), you told me this once before.
XI
Can you tell if you fit into a pattern, or is your life just a series of episodes?
I don’t see the disconnections; I can’t say if there’s a pattern. I was just bold then. My speech, vocabulary, and the way I looked must have seemed provocative, perhaps, even epicene. I threatened expectations. I was different from my older brother, who was athletic and had lots of friends. I was a loner. For my lack of sport, maybe Papá found me not only vulnerable, but also naïve. Was it dissatisfaction or was it nonconformity? I only found solace in my private inventions. Shortly afterwards, I erased, slashed, tore two years of paintings, only to regret this later. Papá said I was rebelling against my own culture.
Your father knew you couldn’t survive a world of machismo and its deeply rooted biases.
That’s the point. I hadn’t understood that yet. Papá saw my creativity as a target for victimization. He told me I couldn’t be a lawyer. I wouldn’t fit in. When I argued I could go into international law, he was equally incredulous.
Perhaps, for that same reason, he never got involved in politics; he knew human imperfections carried their own risks; he recognized the kind of dishonesty that pervaded Venezuela. He wanted you to be safe. That’s why you had to leave.
XII
I’ve come to understand that exceptionalism is a myth. Disappointment is powerful. I had to leave.
XIII
Even if I am surrounded by falsehood, I must not be cynical. What does that serve? Human imperfections can’t be freed from themselves. I feel uncomfortable, however, when people ask where I am from, as if they are diagnosing who I am.
Most people don’t mean anything by it.
It’s my own reaction. I suppose it proves I am not comfortable with English. It feels as if people are placing me in a niche.
Most people can identify with that, I do for one. Few of us ever get the questions right.
Does anyone, really? If they did, answers would be unnecessary.
XIV
That night, it rained. A full moon unveiled itself from behind the clouds. We stepped again onto the balcony and admired the kaleidoscope of twinkling lights across the island.
In the first few years outside of Venezuela, I was enamoured of life in the United States. Long before going there, my Aunt Lina’s place in Buffalo had filled my dreams. She was able to flee the Holocaust. Her rose garden was just what I had imagined. Her graciousness was the same as when I had met her in Venezuela. Her garden left a lasting impression on me.
XV
That morning we anchored in Willemstad, Curaçao, surrounded by a rumpus of pelicans near the pier.
On my first visit back to Venezuela, Papá asked me what I thought about the inflation in the United States. I never knew why he posed that question. Its irony was not lost on me 50 years later, when Venezuela has accrued one of the highest rates in the history of the world.
XVI
We went sightseeing in Willemstad. The city’s old buildings, streets, and bridges were reminiscent of Amsterdam. We took photographs and wandered around slowly. Then thinking of our families, we shopped for table linens.
Do you think your father foresaw the disintegration of Venezuela?
The world where I grew up was always on the brink. Papá used to say he did not know how we were going to manage without him. He feared for every aspect of our lives, and even for every Venezuelans’ families. He even feared a total civil brutality in that landscape of pervasive dishonesty. How could it be prevented?
XVII
Keeping to ourselves, we had a full day at sea. We ate alone. We had little in common with the other passengers: all two thousand of them.
After twenty-four years later, I came back. Without a gallery’s contract, again I have thought about destroying my paintings. This time, I was tempted to burn them, but the flames might have engulfed me and my home. This thwarted me. I could only store them.
Couldn’t somebody have helped?
Papá did the best he could, even inciting jealousy among my brothers and sisters. Perhaps, he felt sorrier for me …. When I was interviewed by a local newspaper concerning my work in the United States, a lot of our neighbors thought the interview self-serving. Then Papá died and I became even more of an outsider.
What happened to him?
By the age of 70, he had become delusional, untethered from his own will. His last five years coincided with Venezuela’s disintegration, and family members sought safety in Europe and elsewhere in America. For me art became secondary.
XVIII
What about your brothers and sisters?
It’s sad to say. Their sense of entitlement has complicated matters. My older brother claimed the right of primogeniture, though he had no legal authority for such. We denied it to him, but lacked the resources to challenge him. He kept the rents mostly for himself. With the passing of years, the properties have lost value and some have been taken over by squatters, and some even expropriated by the government. Out of concern for his safety, I made an offer to help him. He rebuffed me saying he counted on the first Lady of Venezuela. He added that he could not leave Venezuela and lose his identity as a lawyer.
These explanations are puzzling. And what about your two sisters and younger brother? What has happened to them?
My youngest sister moved to Madrid with her husband and two young daughters. My other sister and younger brother have stayed in Venezuela. They protect each other as well as they can. For the last ten years, I have been helping them and my paternal aunts.
I remember meeting your aunts. That was when I traveled to Venezuela with you. We celebrated your mother’s eightieth birthday and your older brother’s remarriage. I also remember his son’s grief. He seemed inconsolable. Didn’t he move to Argentina with his partner?
Yes. We also did our best to console him, such as when he met my former partner, Nelson. He felt reinforced by our presence, and my relationship with Nelson triggered a validation that his father had always feared. All along my nephew sought his father’s acceptance. I told them there was no place for shame.
XIX
Not too far from where we are, in a small fishing village on the Caribbean coast of Venezuela stands a plinth. It pays homage to guerrillas sent by Cuba to Venezuela in the 1960’s. Their campaign collapsed. Five decades later, Hugo Chávez helped achieve Cuba’s fantasy – this time without firing a shot.
I cannot judge Venezuela nor its history, for I no longer am part of it. I have not suffered the lash of Venezuelan repressions. For the past 50 years, I have been in the United States, where measures of rectification constantly challenge authoritarianism and kleptocracy.
Recently, you spoke to my friend Cindy, who is an analyst at the US treasury. She told you quite frankly that the American government’s sanctions on corrupt Venezuelan individuals are not simple issues. The flight of fortunes from countries like Venezuela cannot be easily controlled where there is flagrant corruption.
Indeed, that’s a reality no one can manage.
XX
In your opinion, is there any hope for Venezuelan stability?
It’s complex. It is inexplicable how, for instance, billions of dollars are acquired out of nowhere by the children of local politicians. They care not at all for its constituency or for their country: A nation of laws has ceased to exist.
XXI
Have you ever interacted with Venezuelan officials?
Only indirectly, through second and third cousins (who worked in the executive branch and the Ministry of Foreign Relations) as well as my own brother (who was a legal advisor to a State governor). Aside from them, I have only engaged a would-be reformer, who now lives in Florida. In 1999, he was one of the congressmen involved in writing the last Venezuelan constitution. Currently, among expatriates, he has a large following. In one of his podcasts, he took issue with me over the lack of maturity in Venezuelan politics. He replied furiously to my allegations of self-interest: ¿Y quién coño eres tú?”[And, who tha fuck are you?]. Later, I sent him a text “in general most reformers fail to address what they intend to reform,” and he replied: ¡Ay, por Dios, éste es un gran maricón![Oh, my God, this man is just a faggot]. Then he blocked me.
XXII
We arrived in Cartagena, Colombia, where we toured the old walled city and the Fortress of San Felipe. Long undulating promenades (covered by trellises draped in bougainvillea) were delightfull and hugged the walls of the malecón. The guide spoke of the father of Greater Colombia, Simón Bolívar, who had died at Santa Marta. He pointed out a wine-colored fortress where Gabriel García Márquez had resided.
Even though I did not take part in the protests, with my keyboard I favored dissenters and insurrectionists alike. This was my cri du cœur. Though we have all failed, for me the morality of this call has never gone silent.
It’s your voice.
Time itself is an instrument that balances the absence of truth, the swing of delusion, and the debris of extremism. As time unfurls, it allows us to come to an understanding.
It heals our madness.
Maybe, justice will prevail. Maybe, harmony will be achieved in a new generation.
Also, when we least expect it, despots may usurp our freedoms.
XXIII
We were now in the Panama Canal about to enter the Gatún Locks. Pulled by trains on each side, the ship climbed up through three locks until reaching the waters of Lake Gatún. The architectural feat of the Canal sparked my imagination (suddenly I thought about the Egyptian Pyramids). We reached the shore of the lake on tenders and from there we made a tour by bus. We zigzagged through hundreds of military buildings and army barracks until we arrived at the Locks of Miraflores on the Pacific. From there we drove to the Old City, where we photographed its colonial buildings and plazas. Clustering across the bay, we could see the skyline of present day Panama City. Then we drove to Colón on the Atlantic. Just before boarding back on the Eurodam, we walked through a small zoo leading to the pier. Roaming around, among mammals and tropical birds, we saw a giant anteater and its long tongue, swallowing a thousand morsels. David brings up politics:
No country is exempt from the excesses of partisanship.
But we don’t know the reasons.
Do you think an apolitical consciousness is called for?
I only know that extremism is no remedy for human uncertainty.
The danger is always that polarization can turn into warfare.
XXIV
We arrived in Costa Rica, anchoring in Limón. We disembarked to board a tourist bus. Then we got off to navigate in small boats through the channels that ran along the edges of the jungle. In heavy, intermittent rain, we saw monkeys, sloths, toucans, snakes, alligators, and crocodiles. Once the ride was completed, we got back on the bus, which took us to higher altitudes. When we arrived, we took a cable car into the heart of the rainforest until reaching a research lab, a butterfly garden, and a trail that led to waterfalls. The wooden stairs of the path were slippery from rain. Unable to proceed farther, we heard the thunderous sound of the cataracts.
I was born in a land of wealth, which is what attracted my ancestors. They came to Venezuela as early as 1745, both from Europe and the Canary Islands. Between 1799 and 1804, the German geographer, Alexander von Humboldt, in his writings, lauded the colony as a paradise for the advancement of science. Today this paradise struggles for its own survival.
XXV
On May 13, 2014, I received an answer to one of my queries from the White House’s website for foreign relations, on behalf of President Obama. The email bore the letterhead of the White House, though obviously pro forma. In closing, it read … With our international partners, the United States is continuing to look at what more we can do in support of that effort [i.e. ‘for an honest dialogue between the Venezuelan government and the opposition’]. America has strong and historical ties with the Venezuelan people, and we remain committed to our relationship with them. Their fundamental freedoms and universal human rights must be protected and respected.
To an impartial reader this email may seem either empathetic, or even propagandistic; but the reality is that Venezuela may need the United States, not the other way around, at least not at this time.
XXVI
The last two days at sea, we dined in private restaurants. I took notes of our conversation. David indulged my writing and editing until he complained that I wasn’t paying enough attention to eating. Writing seemed to be the one habit I could not ignore.
It was my solace. That last night, when passing along the southwest coast of Cuba, the rough waters of the sea made walking unstable. Before midnight, we packed our bags and placed them in the hallway outside the cabin door.
Past, present, and future time collided: Chávez’s death in 2013 led me to think about Papá’s in 1997. The year before, I had taken him to urgent care at a private hospital. A neurologist there said he had suffered a brain injury and there was little to be done. He was 74. He could no longer speak. Suddenly, surprisingly, he sat up in anger; something obviously gnawed at him deeply. He threatened.
To the bitter end, your father was tormented. You could neither appease nor redeem him.
XXVII
Next morning was our twelfth and last day, as we arrived in Fort Lauderdale. We went to breakfast on deck two and, again, we ate alone. Then, returning to deck eight, back in our stateroom, we waited to disembark. We were the third group, color red, and, finally at 11 am, were summoned. We went down to deck one and lined up with the other passengers. After our ID’s were scanned, we walked down the ramp to the terminal, collected our luggage, and exited. We called a Uber to take us home, where we arrived 12 minutes later.
Papá’s and Hugo Chávez’s death spared them both from the torment of national crisis.
For Venezuela’s new generation, social inequities are rooted in differences of ideology.
Is the new generation a throwback to the Cold War?
Can the new generation examine itself?
As long as the inquiry is not reactionary: i.e. an inquiry into truth.
This dilemma is not unique to Venezuela. Over this, the whole world struggles.
EPILOGUE
*
Plato’s Symposium: Agathon’s encomium on Eros.
–– “And don’t we know that . . . he whom Eros does not touch remains obscure?”
— “. . . he is the one who makes
‘Peace among human beings, on the sea calm/
And cloudlessness, the resting of winds and sleeping/
Of care”. [Location p. 25, 197 a, c]
Plato’s Symposium: a translation by Seth Bernardete with commentaries by Allen Bloom and Seth Bernardete, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
*
Love’s grace suggests a continuation of learning. As David raised the shades (allowing the sun’s rays to stream into our living room), he hummed: “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.” In response I:“How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed.” We continued:
In the summer of 1975 I took a painting-studio workshop under Herta’s instruction at the University at Buffalo: from that time evolved the bonds of our friendship. Herta’s wisdom came from her own vibrancy; her curiosity seemed boundless. She would explore various new subjects, from computer art to Japanese calligraphy. All this enhanced her as an artist. As a teacher dealing with students, she had little patience, and many of them felt intimidated by her demands. Most memorably, she taught me that an artist had to evoke the meaning lurking behind every image. Art was not a progressive evolution; nothing was new: everything had already been done; the imperative was to make something of significance.
Herta identified with the stories I shared about my family, and especially about my mother. She also told me stories about her own parents, particularly about how much she admired her father. Through the years, Herta’s loyalty was constant. She was as nurturing as a mother. Being 26 years older than I, she wondered why I wanted to spend so much time with her. I responded people of my age bored me.
The last semester of my junior year, Herta invited me to lunch with her husband Ernest, a cardiologist at the Veteran Administration Hospital next to the university. That morning, some students had set a fire outside my door. I called the university police but I accused no one. Later I told Herta what had happened. She and her husband assured me every thing would be fine. That afternoon we listened to the music of Handel and Brahms, talked about the poetry of mathematics, and discussed the polemics of anthropology of art. That night I did not return to my dormitory room, but stayed with a Polish graduate student of architecture: Jurek Pystrak invited me to stay with him until things were sorted out. Little did I know how significant Herta and Jurek were to become.
While studying for finals, someone I didn’t know introduced himself to me. It seemed he had been my bodyguard since the time of the fire in the dorm. I never found out why he was surveilling me. Later Herta commented: “… the university must have taken stock of how lax its security system was.”
After I went off to Yale for graduate studies and Jurek had moved to Berlin, Herta and I stayed in touch. Sometimes we met in Manhattan and would go to museums and galleries. After having finished my studies at Yale, I worked as a stage designer in Manhattan. In 1988 I visited Herta in Buffalo. Her husband Ernest had died two years prior. Herta and I went to the opening performance of Abingdon Square by María Irene Fornés (1930-2018) at the Studio Arena Theater. That night Herta and I had the opportunity to speak with her (I had executed stage-designs for three of her plays, which had premiered in New York City). Again in 1989, I visited Herta in Buffalo; there we attended a retrospective by the painter Seymour Drumlevitch, who had been both of ours academic advisor, artistic mentor, and friend.
In 1992, Herta came to my first one-man show of paintings in Manhattan. Though I did not see her then, we kept in touch by phone. Jurek’s partner Karl in Berlin told Herta that Jurek had died of AIDS in 1984. This came to both of us as a shock; it explained why we had not heard from Jurek for eight years. Herta was instrumental in connecting us to Jurek’s past. Karl then visited my painting studio in Tribeca. Afterwards, he invited Herta to a river cruise for a night on the Rhine to commemorate his impending death (he had dismissed my optimism about antiretroviral treatments as a missionary sentimentality). I had told Herta his outlook was totally fatalistic.
When I first met Herta, I intuited that she was struggling with depression. I learned later much of her search for affection had been uncorresponded. Her husband was also battling depression, having attempted suicide had it not been for his wife. Herta then looked after him through a long period of illness. After his death her circle of friends shrank. She thought herself unwelcome by other couples. In those years Herta was alone and riddled with guilt. Bewildered, she would knock at my door late at night, long past midnight, asking for support. Now in the 1990’s our roles were reversed: she was coming to my aid. Herta fed my optimism and helped me recover from the suicide of my partner of three years.
Then, in the spring of 2005, Herta met David, my partner of five years. As I walked to the avenue to help her catch a taxi, she told me that she only wished she had met some one like David for herself. Her statement did not surprise me, though we were touching each other’s past just on the edges. I understood that David reminded her of her desire to have met, during her lifetime, someone as sensitive as he.
In May 2008 David and I attended Herta’s 80th birthday party in Philadelphia. We met the entire family, including her grandchildren. Prior to that, Herta had often confided to me her insecurities about being a grandmother. She doubted how her grandchildren and son-in-law perceived her; whether she was accepted by them. She was self-conscious of her German accent, though she would glorify it as an appealing distinction. Although, these were significant years for Herta, the burden of a new life weighted heavily on her mind.
In 2011 my mother died from Alzheimer’s at age 84. During the preceding years I had mentioned to Herta that I used to call my mother in Venezuela to read to her “Don Quixote.” From time to time my mother would react with guttural sounds, which I took for affirmations of laughter. During these conversations, I began to become aware of Herta’s own difficulties in her perception of reality. She became easily agitated. She often felt misunderstood. She repeated past events, as if they were taking place now. I listened quietly, hoping she could regain her calm. I tried to interest her in other matters. Was this why she told me that it was important for us to be in contact? Thereafter I tried to call her until it was no longer feasible. After what seemed to be a long period of silence, her daughter Vivien called to let me know that Herta needed 24-hour a day care. David and I drove from Manhattan to visit her in Pennsylvania. In 2016 she was still able to talk. I thought she remembered me until our parting, when she said how nice it had been to meet me.
During our visit, Herta appeared alert. After we had shown her pictures of our place in Fort Lauderdale, she had made several whimsical remarks. Brashly, she criticized cushions that looked like doughnuts, and were completely out of place. Her wit was as sharp as ever. She even recounted her recommendations for graduate school, in which—to my horror—she had called me of the caliber of Leonardo da Vinci. The point is she relished being controversial.
The summer before her death, Herta was much more limited in movement and speech; she seemed listless, though she smiled often in what appeared to be simple resignation. In our banter with each other, she scowled and rolled her eyes mischievously glancing at everyone. We grinned at each other and she gasped with glee. Following this, Herta gestured, her hands around her mouth, as if asking why did I need a mustache. Then I showed her one of my geometric paintings. She looked at it, raised her brows, opening her eyes wide, and said “GOOD!" I was moved by her approval. She looked to be in command. As she continued savoring vanilla ice cream, she played aimlessly with her spoon, but she refused to let anyone help. When we said good-bye, we mentioned we would return in the spring, and she vouchsafed with the same facial expression, “GOOD!"
Memories about the loss of a loved one are painful, precisely because we have loved them. Accepting their past with humility is the one and only choice for their loss. It is an absolute; we embrace our existence through their memories. Grief is the time to endure suffering with forbearance.
1998
Written by Ricardo Morin and edited by Billy Bussell Thompson
Book of Changes arose from working through memory in the act of writing. The process determined the direction and nature of the story. Real memories, chance events, and the shifting conditions of daily life were brought together in search of unity, despite their many possible forms. What emerged was a collage stripped of what was superficial and directed toward its own realism.
Inauthenticity had to be dismissed. Excess also had to be removed. In that process, the story revealed the course it had to take. Yet what was left out remains part of its nature and bears its own mark on the whole.
For me, the process was not unlike creating an abstract painting. What occurs in the solitude of the studio through construction and reconstruction took place instead through language. Each word had to become essential to the balance of the narrative, much as each brushstroke must justify itself within a painting.
Book of Changes seeks to formulate memory and the shifts in perception that occur over time. Though the work draws on lived experience, the personal and particular are not its principal end. What matters more is how one’s truth changes, and how one’s humanity remains difficult to grasp.
Ignis Fatuus: the whole world could collapse; to live, we need false hopes.
Chapter 2
Your paternal grandfather hardly ever spoke. Lying next to him, you suffered his snores. One Sunday morning you sat quietly on the bench with him while he played the organ at the Church of Bella Vista in Caracas. One Sunday afternoon, he took you to feed pigeons at the Plaza Bolívar in Puerto La Guaira. One early Monday, he sat at a carved desk and sipped hot coffee from a demitasse saucer. For a time, he moved his thumbs and whistled. Suddenly he chases you from the house in the belief that you had broken something of his. Fearfully, you ran across the street and were almost hit by a car. You joined older children playing marbles.
Chapter 3
We ignore so much that humility becomes a necessity, not a choice. Nothing is conclusive.
Chapter 4
Your maternal grandmother never engaged in small talk. To dissuade you from sucking your thumb, she applied hot sauce to your left hand before bed. You simply switched to your right thumb.
Chapter 5
Man does not control who he is, nor how he thinks, nor how he perceives himself. You do not control who you are, how you think, or how you perceive yourself. Asking why you exist, or observing how you change over time, does not confer control.
Chapter 6
In his cell, Father Manuel, the math teacher, talked to himself. His murmurs were barely audible. He pressed on us what makes a man great and what makes him small. The principal, Father Lisandro, replied that there was no explanation for evil in the world.
Chapter 7
Can one dispel fears of the existence of God and the devil? It cannot be done. Does culture, like tradition and belief, arise from the imagination?
Chapter 8
As a friend, Rogelio was considerate and attentive. Your mother warned you not to grow too close to him: he is poor and black. You replied: poverty is not shameful and, besides, your father’s skin is only slightly lighter.
Chapter 9
Do you seek meaning in imaginative worlds and daydreams?
Chapter 10
During lunch, Uncle Calixto sat across from you at the end of the table. Casually, he announced the suicide of a couple he had introduced you to only a month earlier. Your consternation was obvious; Uncle Calixto insisted that you inquire no further. Years later, in the same truculent tone, he accused you of evil thoughts: You have the devil in you, for being gay.
Chapter 11
You asked how moral a person can be if one believes in the devil, hell, and eternal damnation. For you, this morality was defective. For you, religion is no different from astrology.
Chapter 12
Fifteen years ago, Francis died of cancer. His brother grieved as if one of his own limbs had been amputated. Years later, his brother set his home ablaze before drinking antifreeze. The family was not surprised. Neighbors blamed you for not expunging his pain. Alarmed, one of them called the next day to accuse you of exposing forty-five stories to conflagration.
Chapter 13
Suicide is no different from murder. To kill oneself is no different from killing another. Both are acts of cowardice. Consciousness belongs only to the living. To end one’s life is to turn against one’s nature. Madness may be named, but it does not relieve the agony. The memory of love is the only consolation.
Chapter 14
Just before first Communion, your father brought up death. You replied that it is inevitable. Later you heard him tell your mother that your answer was quite unexpected. At Christmas time, you told your father that you knew all about Santa. He answered: What do you plan to do about it? You just shrugged your shoulders and asked for his blessing before going to bed.
Chapter 15
Do you suffer from not being innocent?
Chapter 16
The grocer said he knew your family, so you asked him for a ride home on the back of his pick-up. When you arrived there, you found your father in a state of panic. You had disappeared from him, and you thought he had forgotten you. Thereafter, you did not go to your art classes for ten years. Then, as a teenager, you wandered around your neighborhood. One day, in the early evening, you found an older boy studying. He was memorizing something when you interrupted him. He asked why you were offering him candy, and you said: Why not? Aren’t we neighbors? When you got home late, your parents were leaving to report you missing.
Chapter 17
Can anyone measure consciousness?
Chapter 18
Each time you came through the gate to your friend’s house, his German Shepherd lurched forward until he recognized your voice and scent. Your friend had stayed out of school that day, not feeling well. Without preamble, he volunteered that he was being sent off to military school. Then he said he was terribly upset and had to get rid of his stress. You sat quietly at the foot of his bed. The two of you exchanged monosyllables while he masturbated beneath the blanket. He tells you he has to beat and to come. These words were meaningless to you. With a friendly glance, you left, never to see him again.
Chapter 19
You did not ward off fear so much as reckon with its fleeting existence, as when waking from a dream.
Chapter 20
Vacationing with a classmate, your attention was on his older brother Francisco. Each time your bodies touched you trembled. You feared becoming overwhelmed. Long after his death, his appeal still rushes after you.
Chapter 21
From early childhood, innocence had already been lost to ache. You had long been fair game.
Chapter 22
At 18, you met Ennio Lombana after crossing into the neighbors’ house. You became his sexual victim. You went to university four thousand miles away.
Chapter 23
You tried never to think of fear, yet it becomes an obsession.
Chapter 24
Your father and your art tutor both encouraged education in North America, yet they feared its implications. Their memories stand in silence.
Chapter 25
Ignorance is the essential condition of existence. Arrogance obscures anxiety, loneliness, fear, and the absence of love. Rationality cannot be achieved through dogma.
Chapter 26
La Nena Pérez was a golden rebel for José Luis. Her beauty bewitched all who saw her. For his wife Antonieta, however, she was an interloper. Decades later, a letter from him arrived from Andalucía. In it, Antonieta was praised as toda una señora. In a self-deprecating tone, he lauded your father. You had mentioned that La Nena did not recognize you at a chance encounter in Caracas. He was beside himself on learning that your voice was no longer familiar to her. She seemed to have forgotten that you had once canoed across Tucacas Bay.
Chapter 27
How can there be love if one is empty? Ennui uncovers that emptiness. Self-importance aspires to enlightenment just as yearning does to sanctity and humility. To find pure love is a matter of luck.
Chapter 28
Before entering the university, you enrolled in a course in English as a second language. The professor made learning exciting. His patience disarmed you. At mealtime, you spoke on and on, forgetting to eat, and he smiled tenderly.
Chapter 29
Desperation cannot relieve suffering.
Chapter 30
Three Marys flew from South America to Niagara Falls for a visit. They rode the Ferris Wheel at the amusement park on the shores of Lake Ontario. Their visit was a complete mystery, except that they believed they were in contact with extraterrestrials. One of them realized she wasn’t the object of Ennio Lombana’s affections. Your mother’s resulting breakdown was immediate.
Chapter 31
In 1977, hungry and destitute, you came close to dying. You distracted yourself in discos. You met Donald Bossak and Paul Barret: the former insecure and the latter suicidal. You moved into the university dorms to face a group of rioters who had been egged on by your prospective roommate. They shout: Away with the foreigner, setting fire to your door. At graduation, you found out the university had assigned you a bodyguard. By then, you had come to know a student. This Polish dissident, Jurek Pystrak, comforted your misery. The summer before graduation, you studied together in Austria. After graduation, he went on to continue his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and you went on to Yale for the MFA. Jurek died in the mid-80s in Berlin. Only later did you hear it was AIDS.
Chapter 32
Technology extends our lives into preconceived worlds. Algorithmic archetypes impose order on bias, through which they control, sell, and manipulate you.
Chapter 33
Every weekend, you and Jurek traveled between New Haven and Philadelphia. Before taking his Fulbright, he suggested it was okay to date another during his absence. You took this to be a lack of loyalty. From Berlin, he wrote he had met a film historian. After Jurek’s death, Karl visited your art studio. He found your geometrical canvases oddly formal. Was his conversation an echo of his own influence on Jurek and of his own vision of the freedom of artistic expression? He later wrote from Berlin he was dying. In his letter, he says your quests regarding treatments are futile missionary pretenses.
Chapter 34
But it is not a mission, it is compassion. Karl was filled with his own memories; you begged him to keep up hope.
Chapter 35
Never have you cried for someone as you did when Benjamin Ivry left to work in Paris in 1984. After he left, your old friend Carol Magar helped you negotiate American citizenship. Eighteen years later, she died of cervical cancer, and five years earlier, Benjamin had returned from France. Was it his stance of irony that broke you apart as friends? You last spoke to him at a bookstore on Park Avenue and 57th Street. There, on the occasion of promoting his book Maurice Ravel: His Life, you introduced him to your husband David. Benjamin excused himself and left abruptly to meet his agent. Later that year, Benjamin moved to Thailand. He became a biographer and translator of well-known 20th-century figures in the arts. Only thanks to the World Wide Web can you see his image as it ages, and his prose continues to provide you with his particular métier. He remains your provocateur.
Chapter 36
In 1987, you were diagnosed with AIDS. Before the diagnosis, you came to know an Episcopal clergyman and a TV soap actor. Both fought for your attention. For years one disapproved of the other. The actor was ironic and the clergyman was a libertine. The clergyman died of a heart attack in 2008. The actor is in his late 80s. His husband derides you.
Chapter 37
During the years of AIDS hysteria, your friends Philip Jung and Tom Bunny were not scared of death. You comforted them when they lay quietly on your lap.
Chapter 38
Nearly blind, Lyda saw herself as a patron of Latino culture in the United States. She enjoyed curating art shows in Midtown Manhattan. A provincial teacher turned diplomat imposed on her the idea that they had the opportunity to open up the American art establishment. Then a pseudo progressive Bolivarian revolution turns them into populists.
Chapter 39
You listened to grand stories. Their aspirations, akin to religious fervor, never materialized. They are grifters unable to give up their desire to dominate.
Chapter 40
Painting keeps you sane, said a friend who had come to your loft. Your paintings developed an abstract vocabulary. You painted at night and worked as a commercial designer during the day. When your health failed, you renounced everything and chose refuge with your family in South America.
Chapter 41
One learns to live with fear.
Chapter 42
You became unmoored in your native land. You ran into repugnance from both the medical establishment and your family.
Chapter 43
In 1994, the Venezuelan medical institutions were collapsing. A few doctors and several businesses were presented with a proposal for Fundación Metaguardia and countersigned it. It had been registered as a program for people with terminal diseases. The proposal went to the Venezuelan commissions of Health, Education, and Culture, and to the United Nations. It failed. The Venezuelan Ministry of the Family tries to turn the program into activities for the feebleminded. Nothing happened.
Chapter 44
In November 1995, you flew from Caracas to Los Angeles. You had been nominated for an Emmy for your work on In Search of Dr. Seuss. The morning after, you awoke to a fever of 108 degrees. From a hospital bed, you hallucinate making love to an angel descending upon you. To your nurse, you explained that death is an illusion. In your mind, you speak of Egyptian gods and goddesses, of Gestapo agents meandering inside your room, of Zapata fighting for Mexico’s freedom, and of an intergalactic journey on a spaceship hovering over the hospital. A nurse asked you to open your eyes. Your body had begun to slow down; your eyesight had become magnified. You pulled the intravenous line out of your arm and wanted to flee. You could not walk, but somehow you dance to music played on the nurses’ radio. You feel yourself in a different time. You see your home in Venezuela as you crawl on its floor. The grouts are like rivers. Then you open your eyes to the ocean. Your heart pulsates. You climb to your home’s roof and stare at the cloudless sky. Fractals of light vibrate like thousands of rainbows. Now you are awake; your ankles are weak. You stand up. You turn to the doctor and say: What does dignity mean to you? Are you a human being?
Chapter 45
A few months later, you were in your mother’s house. Your father came every week to visit. As you became stronger over the following months, he says you should return to the U.S.
Chapter 46
In November 1996, you flew from Caracas to New York. Your nine-month stay in Venezuela violated your residency status. I believe I was dying and unable to return, you answered. Sir, you may proceed, the agent finally said.
Chapter 47
Some weeks later, your father fell at home and suffered a concussion. After surgery, he died in the hospital. Your stepmother had locked him away as if he were a wild beast. In grief, you painted again. With no more success than before, galleries continued to reject your work. You traveled to Europe with your mother. She spoke incessantly, and nine years later she lost her voice to Alzheimer’s. Without parents, you have no bridge to your brothers and sisters. Throughout the years of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, you helped the family.
Chapter 48
In 2012, painting had become a liability to your health. You closed the studio, and digital technology turns into your medium. Your confidence returns.
Chapter 49
In 1997, you meet Nelson. Together you hiked the Amazon rainforest all the way to Angel Falls. You also swam together in Los Roques. With you he showed himself vulnerable. Was his suicide due to his brother’s death or to your leaving him?
Chapter 50
In August of 1999, you confessed to a Nicaraguan priest in the Vatican. He tells you to measure your responsibilities. You sobbed inconsolably over Nelson’s death. The priest’s response was: This is not the place. From the Vatican, you returned to the hotel, where you locked yourself up. Upon returning to the United States, you sought therapy. There you discussed a relationship with a married English teacher with children who tells you: You have killed me as well. Then you fell into a relationship with an alcoholic who tells you the same.
Chapter 51
Therapy became a crutch and constrained your freedom. When you left, the therapist was disappointed. He had grown accustomed to directing your thinking and actions. That was his empowerment, and much to his chagrin, you left him.
Chapter 52
When you and David meet, he fills a void in you, and you fill one in him. You find respite in an imperfect world.
Chapter 53
He awoke to an itching jaw with stubble. You rubbed against his face and breathed in his musky scent. His eyes had the expression of a loving child.
Chapter 54
His glowing eyes hold a timid wonder.
Chapter 55
Together you travel the world: the Atlantic, the Pacific, the South China Sea, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea.
Chapter 56
On December 27, 2000, a 39-year-old man jumped to his death from a Manhattan apartment building. The leap occurred in Hell’s Kitchen, near your home. He was your primary doctor, and you were both HIV-positive. The week before, you had told him that the medication he prescribed had left you sleep deprived.
Chapter 57
A few friends from my childhood remain in touch today. At 94, Herta is my oldest friend. I have known her for 46 years. She is my mentor and Platonic friend since college. She lost her memory to Alzheimer’s. From Yale graduate school are Angiolina Melchiori, now a news director at RAI in Rome; Ariel Fernández, an American-Argentinian physical chemist and pharmaceutical researcher; and Maider Dravasa, a French Basque with a Ph.D. in linguistics who lives in Paris. All three have been my friends for forty years. As with all my friends, we know the ebb and flow of our strengths.
Then there is Billy Bussell Thompson, once my collaborator. I believe he suffers what Job did not. I have known him since 1987. My true education begins when I meet him. Over the years, we coauthor often, including his editing of many of my WordPress blogs. When I write in Spanish, Italian, or French, Billy is there to guide and to order my thoughts across languages. Book of Changes evolves from a collage of reflections: memory, my tension with the social sciences, my love of history, an interest in meter and its rise and fall in American poetry, suicide prevention, and self-repair. Billy brings precision to my prose: he clears vagueness and scattered allusions and helps me overcome the limits of my bilingual fluency.
Most importantly, there is my husband of over twenty years, David Lowenberger, who exerts the most significant influence on who I am. His friends and relatives also matter deeply. Much to my good fortune, his mother, my mother-in-law Eva, gave me twenty years of friendship. Dignified in every respect, she is an inspiration as a mother and as a friend. She died during the COVID pandemic nearly five weeks before turning 98. I dedicate these stories to her memory.
Ricardo F. Morín Triangulation Series Nº 25 37″ x 60″ x 2″ Oil on linen 2007
Ricardo F. Morín, December 8, 2008; Jersey City, NJ
My work Triangulation Series 2006-08 expands on questions dealing with perspectives synthesizing concepts of pictorial space and infinity: something I have worked on over the years. I have allowed painterly abstraction/plasticity to express both in form and content a kind of art that goes beyond a material world of signs; my paintings reach for the infinite—the mystery and the poetry in every man’s individual drama. I choose the golden ratio 1 = 1618 as a consistent format for nonobjective abstraction which is clearly inherent of infinite congruency [a manifestation common to all known perspective methodologies], to breakdown a dialogue on the fluidity of the vehicle of painting and its geometry. At the same time, I establish a triangulation of the bare plane of the canvas which reaffirms its paradoxical nature as an object: where the fictitious flatness of the plane plays in suspension with the illusory spatial depth of forms expressed on it. Though immersed in 20th-century aesthetics, I neither strive for a specific historical movement nor for the postmodernist agenda. Simply, I look at making art as a “fleshy” product of human experiencing, a resultant of the maker’s own passion. Just as the idiosyncrasy of an individual, indivisible in nature, is blind to causality, an aesthetic frame embraces all its senses and the image is only the result or residue.
Non-objective, timeless, or even existential—in this sense—the image or Kunstgegenstand proposes not to explain what the meaning of experience is; rather, the image manifests itself, provoking interpretation from the observer.
There are no outside sources nor preconceived notions of the final composition. Gesturally and intuitively, I use the plane of the canvas as an active platform (in other words, a conversation, so to speak, takes place among the paint, the canvas and me as I apply paint onto the canvas.) In variegated densities, layer after layer—transparent or textural—the work transforms itself gradually by spectral accruement. In continuous dialogue, I work on several pieces at the same time so all are able to inform the other. An inner rhythm from each composition thus unfolds and guides the shifts and the construction of forms: burials, resurrections, exaltations, veilings, reattainments—all thanks to the gritty and sumptuous nature of the medium; a moodiness arises from the interlocutors with its acrid qualities of dissonance and complementary transparency. Indeed, it is color, as texture that establishes the emotional landscape of each piece. The finished work stands on its own as a concentration of multiple layers; each of the numerous strata is essential to the completeness. There is a sense of multidirectional movement in each of the works that acts on the viewer’s eye as he/she glances over the delineated shapes and peers through the entanglements of strokes and arabesques. The viewer comes away, I hope, with the sense of the works’ generative completeness of a universe making and remaking itself.
As I said at the beginning, I embrace in my love of art a sense of universality; I do this not for my own self-fulfillment, but for the cosmic order and interconnectedness in our own awareness of humanity, the unifying mode from all masters. As such, I am perennially emerging as I wander around in my space of today’s uncertain and leaderless being, where authority is seemingly derived from conflicting, and confusing powers of disbelief. Freedom has come to us but its ethers and incongruities make us stagger.
Ricardo F. Morín Self Portrait:Stock Market New York City 36” x 74” Collage with charcoal pencil 1987
He did not go into other artists’ studios unless invited. If he recognized something in the work, he said it.
At that time, education consisted in finding a means of expression that suited him. It was a way to refine what he saw and felt and to bring it into the work. The subject was his own, but it moved within the traditions of painting and other arts. What mattered was finding his voice as a painter, in the use of color and the depth it could sustain pictorially. On the surface, his gestures remained inscribed.
Within that, he would stand before the work and look, asking what it could contain or where it might resolve. If he recognized something, he stayed with it, not to explain or to correct it, but to register it mentally or to shift it within its structure. There would be a pause, and he would look again, as if something already present had just come into view.
Other artists entered his space with legitimate differences. They did not alter what took place between them.
One moment remains with him.
A graduate student was working on a piece, a structure rising like a tapering tower, bright, near red, perhaps fuchsia, with broken glass along its edges. It was not finished. It was evident that she was still working through it.
He stood beside her and said what came to him. It recalled what he had seen growing up: glass placed on top of walls, not as decoration, but to keep people out, to cut anyone who tried to enter.
She stopped, looked at the piece, then at him. Nothing more was said.
He left.
Later, he saw the piece again when she opened her show at an alternative gallery after graduating. There was a recording, a voice repeating that there is a violent world outside, and the piece and the voice remained together without resolution.
Their advisor in the art department told him that what he had said in her studio did not leave her and passed into the work.
He had not thought of it that way. He said it and moved on.
That is what remains with him, not recognition, but that something one sees can be taken up and continue elsewhere.
Around that time, his mentor said something to him in private. He told him not to take at face value what other faculty members said about his work, nor what he himself might say.
He heard it, and it did not leave him.
During that period, he traveled to Salzburg, Austria, for a seminar in stage design. He had not planned it. It just happened.
The work there required interpretation, and he found himself imposing his own way of seeing so that it would hold. It was not just something one looked at. It generated a mood that people entered and responded to.
He worked from what he saw, though it did not work as expected.
He continued with it.
After that, he entered a selective graduate program. It followed from what he had already started.
There, things took shape within a director’s limits of interpretation. He finished the program, but the way he had been working before did not continue in the same way.
Outside academia, he was received as an outsider; it did not extend beyond distrust. The work remained within that frame. He could see where the attention was directed; it did not include him, whatever he did. In New York City, visibility opened to the same names, not to him.
While he worked in stage design to support himself, he continued to produce paintings.
Opportunities did not present themselves for either.
He worked on what others would present, and it advanced without him.
The hours and the demands occupied the day and extended into the night, and when they ended, nothing was left for his own work. What had advanced before ceased to advance and it was no longer received in the same way. Expectations were in place, ways of doing things, and he saw them clearly enough to know where he stood.
Nothing came of that situation, but he persisted.
He kept working.
When he writes, he perceives what he has just thought and observes it once more without turning it into an answer.
At times, a thought comes with more weight than the rest. Where facts do not admit of equivalence and distinctions become inconvenient, they tend to be blurred; and where they are blurred, judgment loses its basis.
He leaves it there.
He asks whether anything is missing, not that something is missing, but whether.
Almost immediately, what he says begins to take form as an answer.
He stops.
Because that is not what he is asking.
He asked whether anything is missing, not what is missing, and left it there.
It occurs again. What he sees begins to take form as something he could think through.
He suspends that as well.
In the act of working, what he sees and thinks begins to take form as an answer. At times, what appears is not his, yet it comes as if it were. He sees it and does not complete it. It remains and returns without resolving. His attention does not leave him.
He remains within the situation as it presents itself.
There are relations in his life, some close, some not, and they arrive as they arrive. In those moments he responds, not because he decides to, but because the situation calls for it. He responds and confronts what derives from it.
He does not go beyond that act.
That stays there, not as something to return to, but as something that does not dissolve.
He sees himself acting and, at the same time, sees the movement that follows that action.
He does not resolve that movement.
He notices the inclination to fix a conclusion and does not follow it.
What appears presents itself with the weight of certainty for a moment and then recedes.
Ricardo F. Morín Restrictions Watercolor, oil sticks, Sumi ink, and correction fluid on paper. 14″ x 20″ 2005
*
Ricardo F. Morín
January 12, 2026
Oakland Park, Fl.
This analysis addresses the operation of institutional constraint once electoral recalibration occurs; a separate diagnostic, “Temporal Asymmetry,” examines what can allow executive action to outrun institutional response prior to that point.
The United States congressional midterm elections scheduled for November 3, 2026 will determine control of all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 seats in the Senate. These elections function as institutional recalibration points designed to test whether executive authority remains subject to legislative constraint, as outlined in Ballotpedia’s overview of the 2026 U.S. congressional elections.
Historical analysis indicates that midterm elections frequently reduce the governing president’s congressional support, restoring oversight capacity through changes in committee leadership, subpoena authority, and budgetary control, as documented in Congressional Research Service analyses of midterm congressional turnover and oversight authority: a pattern also observed in summaries published by the Brookings Institution’s review of midterm patterns.
Executive governance relying on unilateral action through executive orders, discretionary enforcement, and loyalty-based appointments encounters constitutional counterweight through congressional oversight, which conditions authority rather than removing it.
Legislative control enables investigations, compels records, and slows executive initiatives through procedural review rather than unilateral momentum, reflecting constitutional design rather than personal intent.
Impeachment functions as a constitutional accountability mechanism rather than a criminal process. The House of Representatives holds exclusive authority to initiate impeachment in response to abuse of power or sustained impairment of constitutional governance, as clarified in the Congressional Research Service overview of impeachment.
The principal risk associated with the November 2026 midterms concerns normalization of executive action absent effective legislative oversight rather than suspension of elections or formal abolition of constitutional order.
Diminished oversight produces selective enforcement, institutional protection of incumbency, and substitution of political loyalty for procedural accountability, altering governance orientation while formal structures remain intact.
Prolonged absence of constraint reshapes party structure, shifting emphasis from policy formation toward incumbency protection, internal discipline, and defensive alignment.
Constitutional systems rarely fail abruptly. Institutional weakening advances through tolerance of exception and declining expectations. The November 2026 congressional midterm elections determine whether institutional correction resumes or executive insulation persists.
Political systems are often judged by the ideals they proclaim. Yet endurance rarely depends upon the elegance of principle alone. It depends upon whether ordinary disputes can be carried, day after day, through institutions that keep public life intelligible even when citizens do not agree.
Among critics across the political spectrum, democracy is often treated as an ideology. In that interpretation, democratic language appears indistinguishable from other doctrines that claim moral authority through appeals to equality, popular sovereignty, or the will of the people. Yet political thought has not understood democracy in a single way. At different moments it has been conceived as a doctrine expressing normative ideals, as a set of institutional procedures regulating the exercise of power, and as a political framework capable of sustaining plurality within a shared order. Each interpretation captures a dimension of democratic life. The difficulty arises when one of these dimensions is mistaken for the whole. Democracy does not endure because it advances a doctrine or perfects a mechanism. Its difficulty lies in the persistent effort to hold these dimensions together without reducing democratic governance to any single interpretation.
The interpretation of democracy as ideology arises from the language through which democratic ideals have historically been expressed. Appeals to equality, popular sovereignty, and the authority of the people carry a moral force that resembles the claims made by political doctrines. In public discourse these principles are frequently invoked to justify particular programs or to confer legitimacy upon political movements. A platform speech can borrow the vocabulary of rights while demanding uniformity. A banner can invoke the people while treating dissent as treachery. When democratic language is used in this manner it can appear indistinguishable from ideological persuasion. Critics therefore conclude that democracy itself functions as a doctrine competing with other systems of belief. Yet this interpretation rests upon a confusion between the ideals invoked in democratic rhetoric and the institutional structure through which democratic governance actually operates.
A second interpretation approaches democracy not as doctrine but as institutional procedure. In this view the defining features of democratic governance are the mechanisms through which authority is organized and restrained: representation, periodic elections, constitutional limits, and the possibility of peaceful political alternation. Democracy becomes identifiable less by the ideals it proclaims than by the procedures through which power is exercised and transferred. The most ordinary scenes illustrate this procedural character: a contested ballot is reviewed, a recount is ordered, a hearing is scheduled, and a ruling is issued that is binding even on those who dislike it. These arrangements establish a framework within which political conflict can occur without dissolving the continuity of the state. By emphasizing procedure rather than doctrine, this interpretation clarifies an essential dimension of democratic life. Yet procedural definitions alone do not fully explain why democratic systems remain difficult to sustain.
Institutional mechanisms describe how democratic systems operate, but they do not fully explain the conditions that allow those mechanisms to function. Elections and constitutions may persist even where the distribution of authority gradually narrows. Formal institutions can remain visible while their capacity to regulate power weakens. The change is often incremental and practical rather than dramatic: rules remain in print, but exceptions multiply; oversight exists, but deadlines slip; inquiries open, but findings are withheld; the vocabulary of accountability persists, but the public learns to expect delay. In such circumstances democratic procedure survives in appearance while democratic practice becomes increasingly constrained. The endurance of democratic institutions therefore depends on more than the existence of rules. It depends on a political environment capable of sustaining the disagreements those institutions were designed to manage.
A third interpretation approaches democracy from a different perspective. Rather than defining democracy through doctrine or institutional procedure alone, it understands democratic governance as a framework capable of sustaining plurality. Within democratic societies individuals and groups hold competing convictions about justice, authority, and the direction of public life. These differences are not temporary disagreements awaiting resolution. They represent enduring features of political life. Plurality in this sense is not simply the presence of diversity but a condition in which individuals appear to one another as distinct participants within a shared political world. The everyday evidence is familiar: a city council meeting where residents argue over zoning and taxes, a school board hearing where parents disagree about curriculum, a courtroom where opposing counsel present incompatible claims and still accept the same judgment as final for that case. Democratic institutions therefore do not eliminate conflict; they regulate its expression. They establish conditions under which diverse claims can coexist within a common political order. The difficulty of democracy lies precisely in this task of maintaining institutional continuity while allowing disagreement to persist.
Plurality introduces a persistent tension within democratic governance. A political system must preserve legal continuity while accommodating competing interpretations of public life. Institutions must remain stable enough to sustain authority, yet flexible enough to permit disagreement and political change. The balance required to maintain this equilibrium is inherently fragile. Democratic systems often appear unsettled not because they are failing, but because they operate within a field of claims that cannot be fully reconciled. The signs of health and strain can look similar from a distance: noisy debate, contested outcomes, changing majorities, and continuous scrutiny. The difference becomes visible in whether contestation remains inside shared procedures, and whether losing parties retain a credible path back into public life. This structural tension also clarifies why political systems organized around centralized authority encounter greater difficulty accommodating plurality.
Political systems organized around centralized authority approach plurality differently. Authoritarian forms of governance rely upon a final source of decision capable of resolving conflict through directive power. While such systems may tolerate limited diversity of opinion, their stability depends upon the presence of an authority able to determine the boundaries of acceptable disagreement. In practical terms the boundaries are enforced not only by decree but by predictable signals: which topics may be discussed without consequence, which questions are treated as disloyal, which associations are permitted to assemble, and which public claims are allowed to circulate. The persistence of open and competing claims therefore represents a structural challenge to authoritarian order. Where democratic systems attempt to regulate disagreement through institutional balance, authoritarian systems seek to contain or resolve disagreement through concentration of authority.
Despite this structural difference, authoritarian systems frequently adopt the vocabulary of democracy. References to the people, representation, and popular legitimacy appear even within political orders that do not sustain genuine plurality. Democratic language functions in these contexts as a source of symbolic legitimacy. The vocabulary signals participation and consent, even when the institutional conditions necessary to support those principles remain absent. Ambiguity in democratic language can itself become a form of accommodation. Citizens across the ideological spectrum may adopt expansive definitions of democratic ideals because such language allows their own convictions to appear universally justified while leaving competing interpretations unresolved. The pattern is recognizable: elections occur without credible competition; legislatures convene to affirm decisions already made; courts exist yet rarely contradict executive preference; newspapers publish, but certain subjects disappear from print. Democratic terminology may therefore coexist with political practices that limit or direct the scope of public disagreement.
The coexistence of democratic language with constrained political practice produces a recurring tension between institutional form and political function. Legal codes may continue to affirm representative authority and constitutional order while their application becomes selective, deferred, or postponed. Institutions remain formally intact, yet their capacity to regulate power gradually diminishes. This is often experienced by citizens as a change in expectation: procedures still exist, but outcomes become predictable; rules still apply, but not to everyone; hearings still occur, but decisions appear settled in advance. In such circumstances the outward architecture of democracy persists while the conditions necessary for sustaining plurality become increasingly limited.
Plurality therefore does more than describe the diversity of democratic societies. It explains why authority in democratic government cannot remain concentrated in a single locus but must instead be distributed across institutions capable of mediating competing claims.
Unlike earlier political forms organized around a single source of authority, democratic government distributes legitimacy across institutions capable of mediating competing claims.
The recurring tendency to treat democracy as an ideology arises from the prominence of its language and ideals. Yet democratic governance cannot be reduced either to doctrine or to institutional procedure alone. Its defining feature lies in sustaining a political order in which plurality remains visible and active within a shared world. Democratic institutions endure not because they eliminate disagreement, but because they preserve the space in which individuals can continue to appear to one another as participants in public life. Democracy therefore remains less a doctrine to be asserted than a political discipline sustained through institutions capable of regulating plurality without extinguishing it.
In an era in which human survival increasingly depends upon cooperation across societies, cultures, and political traditions, the capacity to mediate competing claims becomes more than a domestic institutional question. It becomes a condition for the stability of a shared world. Political systems that suppress plurality may impose temporary order, but they remain structurally limited in their ability to adapt to the scale and diversity of contemporary global challenges. Systems capable of sustaining plurality, by contrast, possess a greater capacity to integrate difference into a durable framework of cooperation. In this respect the institutional discipline of democratic governance corresponds not only to a political preference but to a practical requirement for sustaining a shared world.
*
Ricardo F. Morín, March 5, 2026, Oakland Park, Florida
Ricardo F. Morín Triangulation Series Nº 35 13 ½” x 19” Oil on linen 2009
They had been there long enough that no one marked the beginning.
Paths crossed the land without boundary. Some were used often, others only when needed. No one asked who had first walked them. It was enough that they could be followed.
One morning, men arrived with papers.
They did not move through the paths. They stopped at certain points, unfolded documents, and read from them. The words were repeated more than once, as if their repetition secured something not yet established.
A line was drawn.
It did not follow the paths. It cut across them. Those who had walked freely now paused before crossing. Some stepped over it. Others waited. No one could say what would follow.
The men with the papers returned the next day.
They asked for names. They wrote them down. Some names were accepted without question. Others were repeated back differently, then recorded again. No one explained why.
A man who had crossed the line the day before was stopped.
He was told to return. He pointed to the path he had always used. The man with the paper looked at it, then at the line, and said nothing. After a moment, he gestured for him to step back.
The next day, another man crossed at the same place and was not stopped.
No one asked what had changed.
The line remained.
People adjusted their movements around it. Some avoided it. Others crossed only when watched. The paths did not disappear, but they were no longer followed in the same way.
The men with the papers continued to come and go.
Each time, they read the same words.
No one asked who had written them.
*
Ricardo F. Morín, April 19, 2026, in a quiet waiting room.
Ricardo F. Morín Buffalo Series, Nº 2 48″ x 48″ Oil on canvas 1978
At a town hall, one participant says, “They just don’t share our values.” Another replies at once, “That’s freedom of speech.” No one asks who “they” refers to. No one asks which values are meant. The discussion shifts. The reply becomes the center of the discussion.
A participant to the left says, “He can say it.” Across the table, another answers, “He shouldn’t say it.” A third repeats, “It’s freedom of speech.” No one restates the sentence in full. No one asks the speaker to name the values or to identify who is included in “they.” The words that gave rise to the discussion no longer guide it.
Someone tries to return to the sentence. “What do you mean by ‘they’?” The speaker does not answer. Another voice cuts in: “That’s freedom of speech.” The question does not hold. The discussion resumes from the reply.
Then one participant restates the earlier sentence: “They just don’t share our values.” Another replies: “That’s freedom of speech.” For a moment, the sentence and the reply are held together. No one determines whether the reply addresses what is said. No one asks whether the claim can be examined. The moment passes.
From that point on, each response addresses only that same reply. One insists on the right to speak. Another rejects the defense. No one asks the speaker to define “our values.” No one tests the claim that “they” do not share them. The sentence no longer directs the discussion. Those referred to as “they” are not named. They are set apart without being identified. The sentence rejects them without stating who they are.
The phrase is used to defend the speaker and to reject its use as justification. It does not return to the sentence. It allows each participant to take a position without clarifying what was said. Expression itself is treated as evidence of allegiance rather than as an invitation to examination.
At the end, the sentence remains unresolved: it is not examined, it is not sustained, it is not withdrawn. It is left behind. The rejection holds. The phrase remains in use, and the discussion continues from it.
Ricardo F. Morín Buffalo Series, Nº 7 36″ x 78″ Oil on canvas 1979
In a public forum, one participant says: “This country was built by people who came from other places and settled here over time.” Another responds: “People who enter without authorization must be expelled.” Both statements remain. No one relates them to one another.
A participant on one side says: “My parents came here and became citizens.” From the other side, someone responds: “The law must be applied.” A third asserts: “There must be order.” No one asks how those people were received at the time. The statements remain separate.
Someone returns to the earlier point: “How was the situation of those people determined when they arrived?” The interlocutor does not respond. Another voice responds: “People must come through the proper channel.” The question does not hold. The exchange continues from the response.
From that moment on, each intervention turns toward the application of the law. No one asks under what conditions that law is applied or to whom it extends. One insists on borders. Another rejects politics. No one asks how the situation of people is determined. No one asks how those present are classified. The initial statements remain. They are not related to one another.
Then one participant repeats the earlier claim: “This country was built by people who came from other places.” Another repeats: “People who enter without authorization must be expelled.” For a moment, both statements are held together. No one determines whether the same conditions apply to both. No one asks whether one statement limits or includes the other. The moment passes.
Those who arrived under earlier conditions and those now subject to controls can be named. The same terms are not used for both.
The phrases continue to appear. They serve to defend positions and to oppose them. They do not return to the initial statements. They allow each participant to adopt a position without relating them.
In the end, both statements remain: one is not examined against the other, neither is withdrawn. They are left in place. The separation is maintained. The exchange continues without relating them.
Ricardo F Morín Buffalo Series, Nº 3 32″ x 36″ Oil on canvas 1978
At a town hall, one participant says, “This policy removes access to public services—such as health coverage and housing assistance—for legal residents who have depended on them.” Another replies at once, “That’s what people voted for.” Everyone knows the subject is immigration. No one returns to what is being done. The exchange shifts. The reply becomes the center of the discussion.
In another exchange, someone says, “This measure authorizes the detention of individuals without a hearing while their status is reviewed.” The reply comes at once: “That’s what people voted for.” The sentence is not taken up. The exchange proceeds from the reply.
A participant to one side says, “It was decided through a vote.” Across the table, another answers, “That doesn’t justify what it does.” A third repeats, “That’s what people voted for.” No one restates the initial sentence in full. No one asks what the policy does. The words that gave rise to the discussion no longer guide it.
Someone tries to return to the sentence. “Which part of this was voted on?” The speaker does not answer. Another voice cuts in: “It reflects the will of the voters.” What is being done remains unexamined. The phrase remains in use, and the exchange continues from it.
Then one participant restates the earlier sentence in full: “This policy removes access to public services for legal residents.” Another replies: “That’s what people voted for.” For a moment, the sentence and the reply are held together. No one determines whether the vote addresses what is described. No one asks whether the reply accounts for the sentence. The moment passes.
From that point on, each response addresses only that same reply. One insists on the vote. Another rejects that defense. No one asks who loses access under the policy. No one asks how the change is carried out. The sentence no longer directs the exchange. Green card holders, recipients of deferred status, asylum applicants, and citizens by birth can be named, but they are not brought back into the exchange.
The phrase is used to defend the decision and to reject its use as justification. It does not return to the sentence. It allows each participant to take a position without clarifying what was said.
At the end, the sentence is not examined, sustained, or withdrawn. It is left behind, and what is being done is not examined.
Observations On Perception 