Entre los adjetivos con que rebaja la calidad de las cartas, casi viñetas, que dirigiera veinte años atrás desde Europa a su estudiante más destacado cuando éste barajaba la posibilidad de estudiar un doctorado, no se encuentra ninguno que aluda al carácter personal de las mismas, especialmente de las últimas quince que presentamos a continuación. Es evidente, sin embargo, que ello constituye el centro de su crítica cuando en el prefacio al libro donde se publicaron escribe, un tanto elípticamente, que 'hubiera deseado hablar de todas las verdades que tarde o temprano habrían de reventar, pero ello no es posible ni deseable, de modo que debemos confiar en el interlocutor para que complete correctamente los espacios en blanco, que también escribimos'. No parece, sin embargo, que los lectores que accedieron a estos textos veinte años después hayan completado la tarea correctamente, pues basándose en ellos iniciaron la defenestración que condujo a su autor a la más estrepitosa caída. Se equivocó al confiar 'en el carácter expiatorio de su publicación', pues veinte años no son suficientes para abandonar la venganza de agravios imaginarios.
XVI. On tribalism
I write still with my fucking blood rushing through my veins because of... what indeed? beer? the match? nationalism? No sir: tribalism. The joy of jumping at once with the mass, the engulfing feeling of being dragged into the mainstream, unconsciousness, trance, gratuitous belonging. Yet, some modern rules: never political, never standing for any position that actually requires mental processing, never do this for uncool stuff (the worst mistake: being caught doing something for anyone with no-socially-acceptable reward).
Acceptable choices? Concerts, sport matches (appropriately deprived of any kind of violence), parties, socially-acceptable alcoholism and drug use (not abuse), religious services of any non-suicidal non-homicidal kind, of course!
Are you sorry about being included in such an arguable team? Anyone for a jump? Slam perhaps?
XVII. On tourism
There was a time when people only travelled when pushed by the circumstances: job or convenience, war or research. Survival in any case was at stake and no one could possibly journey —let alone emigrate— to acquire some knowledge they could actually get reading books and building up some culture.
What is then tourism? Is there any conceivable reason to travel long distances and find ourselves where we were not called for, amid those who do not welcome us, refusing to share, accept, or learn? Cheap fossil fuel allowed anyone with a reasonable income (let's say, a scholarship: a commodity which more and more people think of it as a right), to get virtually anywhere and take pictures, to get toured and shown the local taste, no matter how commercial, cheesy, or stereotyped.
Sean said to Will he could not tell him how it felt like to stand under the frescos of the Sixteenth Chapel. Was it about dull tourism, the savage hordes that every summer walk the streets of Paris or Tokyo in sandals and t-shirts? Quite on the contrary: what Sean is pointing out is the need of some personal knowledge, exactly the kind of discernment which is out of the scope of the tourist, the kind of involvement that would require another human being, no matter if abroad, no matter if around the corner.
XVIII. On side boobs
When running a TV show, Peter Griffin said to the viewers: "Look at that side boob. [Image] What about that side boob? [Another image] What about this side boob? That turn you on? Well, it shouldn't because it is my side boob [Zooming out]". On a second thought, it occurred to me that you belong to those who really take this advice as tight as possible, not only for yourself, but perhaps for everyone.
Do you like something? Well, wait a second! Zoom out. Is it safe to say you like it? Is it safe to trust or share? Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe I shouldn't. Because we are fat, because we are young, because we are old, because this is my side boob, because that is your side boob. Apparently, I should feel excitement only for appropriate middle-age stuff; you should feel thrilled for anything ranging from fifteen to twentyfive because that is your side boob. Because everyone should zoom out and take the right decision according to their social role, no matter their inclinations, desires, or freedom. I imagine any product, any item in its envelope labeled as a fucking kid's toy: "Adequate for ages fifteen-twentyfive".
Is there any chance we can leave this flat land of two-dimensional clustered thinking and be three-D over it? Is there any hope for youngsters like you to stop behaving as traditional old censorship authorities rooted in prejudice and bigotry? Good luck with that, for even younger guys are already judgmental about all of you. They might as well tell you, before you even notice, you shouldn't like their side boobs.
XIX. On jobs
I had to fight all my life against my tendency to look down at any job: if young, badly paid; if at home, with no technical challenges; if in a foreign country with a high professional profile, deemed to be lived in loneliness. Accidents and circumstances that fit well with my nice ability to criticize and complain. But the truth is that —as you have painfully proven yourself— I do like my job. I do like to work.
It was working under the wing of a Frenchman when I first knew what it felt like to be under competent orders, what it felt like to have the most qualified guy as a boss. It never occurred before, never happened again. There, I finally found someone who shared the opinion that being good at something is a good thing indeed, that doing your job —especially a job as ours where you are supposed to create and play and get competitive about it— was something we should excel at while forgetting about one's role or importance.
As time passed by, the Frenchman became less and less of an ideal guy and behaved increasingly as a megalomaniac businessman. Never mind his faults, never mind if intentionally or by accident, I still feel encouraged by his example and find myself many times mimicking his gestures while working, thinking, or pondering. Has any of this got inherited to you during these years? Have you at least learnt to do your best while simultaneously being able not to lose perspective about what really matters in life? Job is a mean. From eight am to eight pm it is also an end.
XX. On relativity
Triviality: any situation can be read twofold: as the most important thing ever, or, as the least significant piece of nothing. All we have to do is to adjust the lenses, zoom in or zoom out, get more detail or greater perspective, the former to magnify lilliputian problems, the latter to shrug off any concern. It was a Frenchman who first realized and mathematically systematized his views on the very cyclic nature of perspective: Benoît Mandelbrot. If you zoom in enough you will find the very same structures as if you had zoomed out. Fractals as the geometrical representation of the fact that small and big problems share structure, no matter their scale.
Therefore, is relativity a consolation? Do we have to feel comfort and relax just because our time and space magnitudes are naught with respect to the Universe? Are responsibility and morale only ridiculous concepts of low-minded entities in such a world? If there is any chance for laziness and pure idiocy to justify their positions and advocate for hedonism, this might be their best chance. But this is obviously bogus, for what matters to each of us is already under our nose, right now, no matter if there is life on Mars or the Sun will die as a big red giant drying up every drop of water in our oceans. All we have to do is to look at the proper Mandelbrot set; the only consolation we can get from that is to be assured that larger or shorter problems may eventually look alike.
XXI. On a Spanish picture
Today I bought a copy of a picture taken around nineteen twentythree, where we can see Albert Einstein besides Alfonso XIII, King of Spain. The scientist looks at the camera with wide open eyes while most of the Spaniards have their eyelids shut. I couldn't help but thinking of it as an illustration of the Spanish attitude towards science and technology: not only legendary bigotry and backwardness, but stubbornness, i.e., willingness for ignorance. Spain as the Inquisition homeland, as the Catholic fortress, as the country which allowed three centuries of decadence under the Hapsburg and the Borbons until it stagnated for decades within that coward form of fascism that was Franco's dictatorship.
Few countries around the world have experienced such an extreme transformation as Spain within a record time: once they got rid of Franco in nineteen seventy five, they were able to organize a democratic government which successfully faced complex problems such as economic stagnation, human rights, political and linguistic regional autonomy, infrastructure updating, and an international role as a member of the European Union and the NATO. Success attracted a lot of less fortunate people which found in this place not only a solution to their economic woes, but a society which in contrast with other full-of-immigrant countries, was proven to have the best social skills to incorporate and mix, paying no attention to sexual orientation, skin color, religion, political opinion, or whatsoever limitation to human coexistence may exist. Science, of course, has flourished in such an environment.
Sean recalls Professor Lambeau that "Einstein married his cousin. Had two marriages, both trainwrecks. The guy never saw his kids, one of whom, I think, ended up in an asylum". Professor Lambeau fights back: "You see, Sean? That's exactly not the point. No one remembers that". And Sean underlines: "I do."
So do I, kiddo: everything is relative?
XXII. On art and explanations
I may have mentioned to you that I have a British friend who is a painter. In these times, in the United Kingdom, working at the very heart of a country obsessed with productivity as much as their better grandsons in America, Jason is more of a misfit than an asset. A member of the resistance. A discreet outsider who so truly believes in what he does that he prefers to live in modesty with his Czech wife and his baby son than being absorbed by the dull activities modern men have to do in order to make a living. He is not conceited by his situation, he is not trying to prove anything, he would rather work at his atelier than performing as an affected artist for art dealers and businessmen.
I always suspected that the true artist usually comes without explaining himself. Musicians that play, painters that paint, but no chatterboxes pouring words into microphones and displaying antics before cameras. Explaining belongs to the word and word is language as much as language is thought, intention, rationale. Art should be above all that. Art should be without explanation, without any restraint no matter if political, moral, religious, or whatsoever. Art should explore the dark side of our wakefulness and this is why I do find more comfortable than anywhere among surrealists. What could have been more tempting than an art which is rooted in dreams and subconscious, involuntary sensations, automatic writing? Lorca, Dali, Buñuel, even Francis Bacon, who died in Madrid in nineteen ninety two, the last painter. No explanation needed.
XXIII. On proof
In Contact, the novel and the motion picture based on it, astronomer and science writer Carl Sagan made Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) experience a sort of intergalactic voyage from which she returns with no proof. While being inquired by a commission, she asks them to believe her she met her father. 'Did you love him?', asks her Joss while speaking about her father. 'Yes. Very much', she says. 'Prove it'. She stares at him speechless, puzzled. Her scientific sufficiency and skepticism turned against her.
We are told that mathematics is the most pure form of science for no statement can stand within its corpus without a proper proof. Rigorous, logical, perfectly wrapped up, mathematics is still the subject of an ongoing debate about its nature: whether, for example, it is hardwired in our brains or not, whether it is an intellectual construction —a human product— or it is inherent to the structure of the universe, lying out there at the core of everything. But mathematics also tells us, from time to time, something deeper about reality and life, something truly philosophical.
It was with great disappointment and awe that mathematicians welcomed Gödel's work about completeness and consistence of the most elementary body of mathematics: arithmetic. What this German fellow proved was that Hilbert's intention of finding every mathematical true via an algorithm feed up with axioms and producing every possible theorem was doomed to fail, for an axiomatic system must be incomplete to be consistent or inconsistent to be complete! What does this imply? That there are true syntactically correct statements whose proof is beyond the deductions one can make from a body of axioms. Or: that avoiding contradiction leads to necessary incompleteness, to renouncing absolute truth! Or: that we should distrust those who claim to know the absolute truth for such a pretension should necessarily imply that they are contradictory.
'Answer the question, Doctor. As a scientist -- can you prove any of this?'. After a tense silence, Dr. Arroway answers back: 'No'. Incompleteness may indicate she is right.
XXIV. On acquiescence
People agree with each other for many reasons, very often just to lubricate social relationships and carry on; sometimes because they don't give a damn about anything. The needs of the horde are bigger than those of individuals, so they gather by agreeing and disliking. Hard to believe such a primitive behavior is actually exhibited by qualified professionals performing intellectual activities and thinking high of themselves, presumably cheering their thought independency, supposedly using their very brains to ponder and consider instead of rushing into fixed positions.
Apparently, nobody wants to be cast out to live surrounded by his own thoughts alone: we yearn to be understood, taste sympathy, meet our fellow minds and befriend with them. But shallow spirits —no matter if educated or analphabet— do not care for discrepancy, do not tolerate dissent. Hence, the worst solution comes at hand: highbrows conspicuously agreeing about what deserves to be read and understood, disliking the same stuff (let's say, religion, football, the lack of cultural interests in life), clapping everyone's back to stress the fact that they agree, that they belong, no matter how phony or stupid; on the other hand, laymen also yielding at every opportunity to the safest common place to dilute themselves into the anonymous mass, the mainstream, the comfortable average.
Don't you think so, dear?
XXV. On crying
I do regret having cried before you. I do think that mature people should have learnt to love. I do believe that even more mature people must be aware that inexperienced individuals do not know how to love and can therefore hurt. Why on earth did I cry knowing all these facts at that time? Why do I feel this was a turning point from which we —you and me— have never recovered?
A Brazilian Ph.D. student, aged twenty seven, technically competent and a beautiful soul, no concerned about showing off anything, did tell me today that he cries. Not intentionally of course, not on regular basis, but he cries. What made this guy confess —if confession is the right word, deprived of any guilt, any embarrassment— such an intimate easily criticizable fact? What made this guy share if he is not a snob, if he is not a phony bastard proud of displaying vulgar emotions as to be loved and cherished? First, a brave respect of truth as a triviality whose admittance does not weaken any human being sure enough of himself, but enriches communication and empathy. Second, the certainty —because of his own maturity and experience— to recognize a soul mate when it appears before him: able to love, able to understand, not out of stupid triviality and common place, but out of truth, out of pure reality.
'Will not cry in public', preaches that post-modern Decalogue that rules our modern life and was first uttered in 'Fitter, happier' from Radiohead. Not so glad to find out they were right. Yet, hope: in these dark times, in these businessmen's regime where being emotional is not only ridiculous, but punishable, the Brazilian PhD student vindicates what shouldn't have been explained in the first place: humanity, vulnerability, the hard-to-learn ability to love. When are we going to forgive us? When are we going to admit there is nothing to be forgiven about?
XXVI. On laughing
Curiously enough, the first professional course I ever taught was mathematics for more than fifty candidates to the Master program of an infamous research center, in nineteen ninety eight. Still a student of the very same program they wanted to get into, aged twenty two, half of the audience was older than me, despite of which things were as you, fifteen years later, witnessed: technical proficiency, openness to questions and remarks, emotional involvement, and tons of overall laughing here and there about everything, about everyone, about the tragedy and contradictions of finding us trapped in our otherwise tender lives and ridiculous plans.
What am I going to miss the most once you all leave to carry on with your plans of conquering the world? Negrita's communication skills? Monofiera's ability to fail once and again without apologizing? Selbor's mental illness which disguises every rapacious move as 'friendship'? Your paper-producing technical competence behind of which you can comfortably hide from anyone? No. I will miss —I already painfully do— your defenseless laughing in the middle of some working morning, the very instant —one, two, three fucking seconds— when your mask involuntarily fell to welcome the others, the mask you were taught to wear not to pee your pants out of fear.
XXVII. On authority
My Spanish girl friend who kindly opens his home and life so I can inhabit both as often as I wish, nearly ten years older than me, told me last week by the Madrid Opera while sharing a beer with me: 'You cannot work with people you are not interested on. You need to fall in love in order to care and do your best; otherwise, dullness and pain replaces pleasure. I know your ways: your convincing the others, seducing them with your overwhelming disposition and compromise; then, if everything goes right, you fall in love and the seducer becomes seduced, someone who asks the impossible, a fucking burden. How do you expect your students to react? How do you think they can bear your expectations of work and friendship? They are remarkably younger, they are your employees and subordinates, they expect you to be the boss, an authority figure and not their friend. It is as absurd as those cool parents who intend to befriend their children when parenting is called for. If you want them to be your friends —which of course can only happen if they want too— you have to wait at least until they finish their working relationship with you'.
Later, back in France, it occurred to me that my girlfriend's opinions were indeed right provided we were talking about five-year old boys, people who I cannot positively befriend with, which cannot decide, which have not completed their upbringing and whose word cannot be trusted. But you are not boys. You are all adults, not only biologically, but also in the very subtle game of getting detached from home and becoming economically and psychologically independent.
As a child I did not like to be dismissed by adults just because I was too young; as an adult, I am not used to treat anyone over eighteen as a child. I am certainly not treating my team, those who I take care the most, those to which I openly talked every fucking time, as children. If you were expecting authority without any other approach you should have worked somewhere else; if this was too much for you, you might have to reconsider every time you think of yourself as an adult, as an open-mind guy, for these characteristics would have implied someone able to reach understanding by clearly speaking out his mind. And I did.
I am aware of course that there is a long way to maturity and wisdom and that we might be in very different paths towards those goals. But, if presumably adults, if able to talk about everything without hiding like a coward behind silence, when do you plan to start and move ahead? Is my girl friend right and I have to try the indirect approach which applies for children and talk to you taking care of every word I utter, measuring if appropriate, weighting if adequate for your upbringing? If this is so, I should have worked in a kindergarten, I should work shoulder to shoulder with my phony pretentious coleagues. Big news: I won't.
XXVIII. On respect
Is authority undermined by friendship? Are both concepts at odds since power balance between friends cannot stand for any of them to be in charge? Perhaps the answer depends on what authority is based on: no wonder it can be threatened if its only source is a title or a designation which has to be shown off in order to remind every subordinate of who is the chief.
Not everyone looks to exert authority, not certainly me, since the world has been arranged in such a way that power lies out of the reach of my kind. What people like me can hope for is something completely different and not any more required by authorities of any type around the world: well-earned respect, a result of hard work, mastery, and fairness. Those of my kind would not be able to win in such a dirty way as the Netherlands did today. Those of my sort may consider ideal to be as Clarice when addressed by Hannibal with this words: '...would they have you back, you think? [...] Those people you despise almost as much as they despise you? Would they give you a medal, Clarice, do you think? Would you have it professionally framed and hang it on your wall to look at and remind you of your courage and incorruptibility? All you would need for that, Clarice, is a mirror'
Thus, I wish you no medals, no frames on the wall, but to be worth of looking at yourself in a mirror. I wish you respect.
XXIX. On love
I am close to the end of this voluntary exercise which has been performed under a variety of circumstances, mainly after hours, late at night, no matter if tired or depleted. As with everything I have to say goodbye to, ending up this habit will surely make me miss it. You can easily imagine me cursing for finding myself thoroughly exhausted after a long day, yet feeling obliged to write you an e-mail that at least makes sense. Even so, I am going to feel withdrawal when it all finishes.
Yesterday evening I went to this huge bookshop by Václavské Naměstí, at the center of what feels to me like a second home, Prague, and went downstairs to the 'Science' section where I found nearly every title I read on science popularization: those from proselytizing atheists like Dawkins or Hawking; those by Hofstadter and Penrose intended to shade some light on the mysteries of the mind, free will, and consciousness; those audaciously written by Feynman on physics and academia, De Paulos or Du Sautoy on mathematics, Gardner and the very Einstein on relativity, Greene on superstring theory, Jastrow and Goodall on evolution, even Diamond on why some civilizations succeed while others go backwards. All of them very stimulating books despite the fact that they can only discuss things shallowly while a real study requires much more of an effort and formality. We all know that because we are scientists. We all, nevertheless, cannot resist feeling excited by these oeuvres as if they were not literature, as if they could indeed teach us something beyond implanting an idea, a thought, a conception.
But there is an author for whom I feel the greatest affinity and admiration, someone who has inspired me since I was a boy bothering adults with questions about everything: Carl Sagan. This astronomer, science author of books and TV series, was not a typical case in any way: his books are not the kind of technical material someone would read to proudly display some knowledge about anything without any depth; he was not like many other science popularization authors who feel inclined to replace religious leaders by proclaiming science as a new cult —the good one, with its commandments and punishments. Nothing of the sort. This New Yorker was convinced that the most important thing about science was its method which found provisional truths based on rationality, free inquiry, and skepticism, all of which served to a higher purpose: understanding the world to make decisions, finding our place in the universe to be conscious and survive as species, valuing those human qualities worth saving to run this planet (and beyond) with freedom and responsibility, one of which was certainly love.
'For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love', he said. Any form of love is something to be cherished and preserved, for it makes this world habitable, this huge universe, bearable. Among love figures, partnership is what I found the most fulfilling, for it ideally deals with us at any level: sexually, physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. I cannot think of such a relationship with someone moronic, void of curiosity, without any ideas of his own; I find it also impossible with someone incapable of physical demonstrations or lacking any emotion. Having had the fortune of finding this form of love since I was twenty two, I can only wish you to live as thoroughly and intensely so you could 'tell me how it feels to wake up next to a woman and be truly happy'. For my partner, I do.
XXX. On future
Two years ago I managed to convince you about doing your engineering thesis with me, dragged you into a dubious master program, involved you in a project by simply doing my job and openly discussing pros and cons. Back then I said you had nothing to lose if you got involved into the master program since any option —industry, academia, enterprise— would remain still available by the end of this period. Now you can all see this was true, indeed, but it had a catch: you could also decide for the only option you did not have at that time: to keep doing research via a PhD program.
How on earth did you all end up pursuing PhDs? What this month —long, quite exciting and troubling— teaches us about you refusing the French option for the Spanish one which will most likely bind you to theoretical research in academia? In life we never have time enough to thoroughly chew up our options and decide; anyone's opinions (including ours) about what we have done keep changing along the years. Are you doing right or wrong? Will you succeed or fail? Nobody knows. Moreover: as long as you are not dead and your story frozen and completed, nobody can actually know. You have more information than anyone of us have ever dreamt about before getting into a PhD. Is it a good thing? We will see.
But there is something you can be sure is wrong, no matter what tomorrow brings: to buy an option that does not fulfill you and stick to it as stubbornly as you can, out of fear or resignation. Whether we talk about your job, your hobbies, your girlfriend or wife, your friends or even the city you live in, you must remember that your first obligation is freedom, for a man in a luxurious, spacious prison, is no longer a man. Freedom to choose, freedom to quit, freedom to turn the page and find what better suits you. Life is too short to be finished saying 'par delicatesse j'ai perdu ma vie' (Rimbaud).
We are done, kiddo. We can now begin.
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