(Today) I Am Not / (Hoy) No Soy
The Spanish language (or Portuguese) clearly distinguishes between the concepts of “ser” (being one thing) and “estar” (being in a state or place). Not all languages do. When speaking English, if we analyze it from a Spanish speaker’s perspective, I must refer to someone “is” and then what they do. I can’t differentiate if someone “is” happy or if someone “is” in a state of happiness now (I am happy / I am happy … now?). How does that change our way of thinking?
Linguistics is far from my hobby or area of expertise (clearly reading Chomsky occasionally doesn’t count). But I recently heard a French woman say in Spanish (and living in a country that speaks it), “I still don’t fully understand the difference between ser and estar,” and I can’t stop thinking about her phrase or her state of uncertainty. Ways of understanding the world tied and forged at the mercy of our mother tongue. How does this influence our perception of temporality? Is Spanish-speaking culture perhaps more aware of the material world that surrounds it?
My language allows me to precisely describe whether, at its fundamental essence, something has a characteristic or if it’s a temporary state of itself. If I am a happy person or if I am happy. Is being happy, being happy? How do I translate this question into English? Or into our Romance language cousins? Can you say that in French or Italian?
In a Hegelian interpretation, the linguistic distinction between “ser” and “estar” not only reflects a more nuanced understanding of reality but can also be seen as part of the dialectical process through which individuals come to know and articulate their relationship with the material world. It allows for an articulation of the tension between permanence and change, essence and existence. Hegel didn’t speak Spanish, and I don’t feel like finding out how he expressed it in the original manuscripts. That is, that didn’t stop him from laying the foundations of materialism. But perhaps, just maybe, there is some advantage of the Spanish-speaking world in being self-aware. I don’t know if it’s mere voluntarism to find something that gives hope to the culture that embraces me, to the people around me, or to endow our contribution to humanity with superlative meaning. Or maybe it’s something to start understanding how we think, from us, for us. How we are and how we exist.
And me? Far from thinking that I first think of myself and then of others. It’s not altruism or self-sacrifice. It’s not that others are there and then me. I am others, I am inserted in others. It’s not a sequence, it’s a constant contradiction, a clash between coexisting parts. How do I distinguish what I am from what I am? What others determine about my state, with my true essence? In a world under an authentic kingdom, dominated by a few who will never bother to know the difference between what someone is and what someone is. We imitate their lack of notion of the difference as a kind of aspirational self-flagellation.
So we submitted to a minority that does not share our linguistic base and forced us to replace Father God with Market God, leaving the former as an indifferent and part-time referee. We are what we are capable of consuming. There are more articles of faith in an economic debate than in a religious one. Meanwhile, in a catastrophe, Market God is emptying us of meaning.
If I set aside what I consume, what makes me be? What am I, apart from what I want to buy? What defines me? What am I, apart from what I am doing to produce (today)? Will I lose meaning, that is, will I be less me, when biology prevents me from producing? Is the market validating me right now? The idea of me to those who use or consume my image? Or am I validated by those who think of me, who know me?
How do we proactively overcome this limitation? Without placing in our advantages an idea of superiority. How do we not blame others for all evils, to the point that it removes our responsibility? We cannot resent until we become tyrants of our own destiny. And just as others do not distinguish between being or being, we miss out on other things. Because we know very well that there is always a word in Quechua, Japanese, or Malay that leaves us stunned by its beautiful eloquence to express something real and that our language does not allow us. And the other is always an opportunity.
Article in Spanish here
