Mystical Pragmatism

Now, I am here. What do I do? Why do I do it? From where do I do it?

In my normal condition as a person there seems to be a distortion in the priorities I follow in my life. The actions that happen through me obey superficial impulses, usually learned habits or pressures received from the societies around me.

It is as if I never stopped to think about what I am doing. And when it occurs to me to think about it, a voice stops me: Philosophy! Nonsense! Banalities!

A distance opens up between my actions and where they come from. Everything I do is the consequence of other things I do, which in turn come as a response to other things I did. If I go back into the past, if I project myself into the future, all my actions are a wheel of events and circumstances that run me over, leaving me no freedom to decide anything.

Mechanically I submit to the whims of the wind. I see war and I enlist as a soldier to try to attack it. I see chaos and I throw my Molotov to try to put it out. I see noise and my voice roars to try to silence it. What philosophy is more useless than believing I am someone practical while I bow like a zombie to events? What greater nonsense than filling my mind with whatever I find in front of me, however poor it is for me? What greater banality than drawing the sword in search of peace?

But I stop and look: Where does everything come from? Is it not from myself? And who am I? And what is this world I move in? What is more immediate to me, I or the world?

Only from outside the wheel of actions can I observe actions. Only from outside of time can I study the passing of time. Only from inaction can I be pragmatic.

Pragmatism is first going deep into the meaning of each action before allowing it to happen. Pragmatism is knowing who I am before defending a position that claims to be me. Pragmatism is not getting involved in what happens without first realizing that what happens is only a story that gets lost in the inaccuracy of a useless memory.

Am I a philosopher, then, for staying here, while tales of pragmatism fly over foreign miseries without rhyme or reason? Am I a fool for not wanting to part from my heart while the theories of a world speak of death and desolation? Am I banal for preferring silence amid the shouts that cry out desperately for a minute of silence?

I am here, free, pure, innocent. Everything else is the lie of a philosophy

I am here, observing, untouched. If anything else happens, it is pure nonsense.

I am here. There is nothing to do.