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„The timeless Present“ – Befreiungstheologe Frei Betto.

During the twentieth century cinematographic art introduced a new concept of time. It is no longer a linear, historical concept which moves through the Bible and through the works of Aleijadinho[1] and Guimaráes Rosa™s[2]  Sagarana. Simultaneity predominates in films. The barriers between time and space are eliminated. Time acquires a spatial characteristic and space acquires a temporal one. In cinema the camera™s eye and the spectator™s eye freely move from the present to the past and then to the future. There is no uninterrupted continuity.
 
Television, which appeared at the end of the 1930s, causes a paroxysm. Faced with the simultaneity of distinct times, the only anchor is the viewer™s here and now. There is neither durability nor irreversible direction. The backdrop of historicity “ which supports biblical narrative and the paradigms of modernity including one of its preferred fruits, psychoanalysis “ is diluted in the cocktail of events where all times merge into one. Dercy Gonçalves is dead and, on her grave, clips show her as being alive and still interpreting her obscenities and irreverent personality.

Little by little the historic horizon is switched off like the stage lights after a performance. Utopia exits the scene allowing the philosophers of doom to prophecise: ”History has ended. Contrary to Koheleth™s warnings in Ecclesiastes, there is no longer a time to build and a time to destroy, a time to love and a time to hate, a time to make war and a time to establish peace. Time is now and in it construction and destruction, love and hate, war and peace overlap.

Happiness, which itself is the result of a temporal project, is therefore reduced to mere instant pleasure which is epidermic, derived, preferential, the dilation of the ego (power, wealth, fame etc.) and of sensitive ”touches (optical, epidermic, tasty etc.). Utopia is privatized. It is reduced to personal success. Life is no longer moved by ideals nor is it justified by the nobility of embraced causes. All that is required is access to consumerism which brings worth and comfort: good social standing, a house at the beach or in the mountains, a luxury car, an electronic communications kit (mobile phone, computer etc. and leisure travel. An island of prosperity and peace immune to the tribulations of a world moved by violence. Heaven and Earth “ as promised by advertisements, tourism, new electronic equipment, the bank, the credit card etc.

Even faith does not escape the subtraction of temporality. The Kingdom of God is no longer ”far off so as to be found ”up above. As simply subjective consolation, faith is reduced to the hope for individual salvation.     

Thanks to new communications technology time is now confined to subjective characteristics.   To experience it is to have a local awareness of the present. If in the Middle Ages the supernatural bathed the atmosphere a person breathed and in Illuminism hope for the future justified faith in progress, what matters nowadays is the immediate present which is avidly perpetuated. We are all eternally young; our bodies are worshipped as though submerged in the elixir of youth. We will all die healthy and svelte¦   
                           
Projects are destroyed during that cyclical time, where the same water always flows down the same river. In the past there was courtship, engagement and marriage. Nowadays, join together with no commitment. After years of marriage, one can return to a time of courtship and, once again, to the married state.
 
The abolishing of existing time goes hand in hand with the abolishing of conscientious guilt. A person can have varied experiences without questioning himself or herself regarding ethical, political or ideological principles. Are there not corrupt priests and bishops and utopias which end in oppression? Does TV not portray yesterday™s honest person giving in to swindling today? Does a thief not practise humanitarian actions? Where is the limit between good and evil, right and wrong, past and future?

”All that is solid disintegrates in air which is unbreathable in this postmodernity where temporality is fragmented by cuts and dissolution, close ups, flash backs, much nostalgia (i.e. bossa nova) and few utopias.
 
If there is anything positive in this simultaneity, in this here and now, it is the search for interiority. Of mystical time as absolute time. Time as synthesis/suppression of all time. Eternity erupts here “ eternal-age. Pure fruition. Where life is gentle.

In the arts, in an exemplary way, music and poetry become closer to the simultaneity which volatilizes time, giving it permanent characteristics. In music, our ears are capable of catching only the articulation of a few notes. However the memory of all the notes which went before remains in our emotion. As such, melody is unattainable, like poetry, a rhythmic succession of syllables and subtle words. What exists is the resonance of the note and of the word in our subjectivity. Then, the sequence lodges in us. It is not time sliced into past present and future. It is the timeless present. Infinite time. As in love where the day to day is simply the ordinary beat of an extraordinary inspiration.

*Frei Betto is a writer, author of ”A Obra do Artista “ uma visáo holística do Universo (The Work of the Artist “ a holistic view of the Universe (Ática).

[1] <#_ftnref1>  Aleijadinho “ Antonio Francisco Lisboa (1730-1814) “ Brazilian architect and sculptor.

[2] <#_ftnref2>  Joáo Guimaráes Rosa “ Brazilian author “ (1908-67).
ABOUT THE AUTOR

He is a Brazilian Dominican with an international reputation as a liberation theologian.
Within Brazil he is equally famous as a writer, with over 52 books to his name.  In 1985 he won Brazil™s most important literary prize, the Jabuti, and was elected Intellectual of the Year by the members of the Brazilian Writers™ Union.Frei Betto has always been active in Brazilian social movements, and has been an adviser to the Church™s ministry to workers in Sáo Paulo™s industrial belt, to the Church base communities, and to the Landless Rural Workers™ Movement (MST).In 2003-2004, he was Special Adviser to President Lula and Coordinator of Social Mobilisation for the Brazilian Government™s Zero Hunger programme.
 

Dieser Beitrag wurde am Sonntag, 12. Oktober 2008 um 19:49 Uhr veröffentlicht und wurde unter der Kategorie Kultur, Politik abgelegt. Du kannst die Kommentare zu diesen Eintrag durch den RSS-Feed verfolgen.

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