But even if I believed in God, the catholic approach towards nature would be impossible for me, contradictory with my entire consciousness, with my feelings – and that’s because of the matter of pain. Catholicism’s disregarded every being, except for human. It’s difficult to imagine more olympic indifference to “their” pain – “their”, animals’ or plants’. Human pain makes sense for catholics – leads to salvation – humans have free will so it is a punishment for one’s sins and afterlife will reward any detriments of the current life. But a horse? A bug? They have been forgotten. This suffering knows no justice – bare fact emanating absolute despair. I put aside the complicated dialectics of holy professors. I’m talking about a common catholic, who walks around in the glory of justice giving him everything he deserves, while being deaf to the infinite abyss of that other pain – unjustified. Let them suffer! He’s indifferent. After all they have no soul. Let them suffer then – pointlessly. Yes, it’s difficult to find a doctrine worrying about the non-humane world less, it’s a doctrine proudly humane, cruelly aristocratic – unsurprisingly it lead us to the state of blissful ignorance and holy innocence in relation to nature, which manifests itself in our idyllic descriptions of mornings or evenings.
Gombrowicz, Diaries vol. II

Gombrowicz hunts me from the depths of 1958 with hideous timeliness. I do realise one tends to seek related meanings if things are praying on their mind and if one seeks long and hard enough one will find. But, but…

Our current discourse of “environment”. Not even nature, “environment” – of humans, because it only matters when it surrounds us. We speak of protecting the environment, because it turned out not to be an bottomless, never ending resource. And as this resource runs out it endangers our way of living. Panic! We call to stop damaging environment, but in order to protect us. The actual pain of other life forms is not even considered in nomenclature.

The indifference is a part of preservation instinct – if we were to feel the pain of every fly or grass with full empathy, we’d all end up safely placed in appropriate mental institutions by the age of 22. However – save the Bengal tiger, so that our kids can see it not only on photographs?

Yes, that’s what I think about. Especially when struck down by a killer migraine and completely helpless.


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Comments ( 2 )

I enjoyed this, thanks for posting it. Did you translate it yourself? I’m assuming his books aren’t available in English. Anyway, nice writing at the end as well. Keep up the good work :)

Dan added these pithy words on Jun 22 10 at 8:37 pm

I think he’s books are available in just about any language imaginable.
I’m doing some translating work lately and getting into having people understand foreign text – the way I do ;)
cheers

ana added these pithy words on Jun 22 10 at 8:41 pm

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