Rethinking tele-vision. Heriberto Yepez
* Interview with Ariel Ruiz Mondragón
Recently, within the Versus collection, Deckchair Publishing the book was circulated Heriberto Yepez Against tele-vision, a book in which the author makes an original and critical reflection on the controversy-technology-art equipment in two booklets downright terse. The former deals with the transition from the era in which dualistic, gradually Telefis has replaced a metaphysics, which has brought severe consequences philosophical term which still fail to see.
The second deals with what he calls the co-mass-media, which outlines the state psychohistorical of Mexicans and the formation of popular culture, media, expressing his deep conservatism. This can be enjoyed daily in the comic-programming-especially the television bidictadura governs us.
We had a brief conversation with virtual Yépez presented here, which covered topics such as changes in thinking due to Telefis, the knowledge that occurs, the current status of Mexican psychohistorical, the possibilities for democratization beyond the Mexican television, as well as the conditions to overcome the Telefis and destiny of domination.
Yépez is professor at the Autonomous University of Baja California, author of a dozen books and a contributor to Labyrinth, cultural supplement daily Millennium of Replicante Metapolítica and other publications.
Ariel Ruiz (AR): Why write a book like yours?
Heriberto Yepez (HY) We must create their own concepts. When someone creates an idea, some say that only created a word. In Mexico we have this idiotic philosophy. The writers have dealt only trifles. The Mexican has not dared to redefine reality, is a coward.
TV To think I used concepts that describe what has been happening since the mid-twentieth century: a dualistic paradigm shift.
AR: In the first booklet, treat the transition from metaphysics to Telefis in it, unlike that postulates that reality can be found "far", "beyond", but within this world . What changes have brought this for thought?
HY: Combat metaphysics, as if it had been replaced by another cosmography! The Telefis-to shorten in against Tele-Vision and delve into other place, is a double loss. In metaphysics, we lost the here and now for the benefit of a beyond illusion. Hence, continued loss of the beyond.
We were in limbo on Hollywood metaphorized unwittingly or Televisa, in the sense that nothing is real and reality is something we have to achieve, because it is far, including more immediate. That one day try to know through the information, which brings us news of the Present General beyond reloaded and neo-here-now.
AR: You find on television infotainment and entertainment, there is the industrial amalgamation of these elements: infotainment, "and an obsession for today, giving way to what you call pantopía. Does this have to do with shortsightedness toward the future and the lack of large historical projects designated by postmodernism?
HY: Postmodernism is a continuation of the values \u200b\u200bof modernity. No self Sino-knock-out advocated by himself romanticism. More Disappointment romantic! Nobody wanted to see it. Romantics argued that the world had no meaning. Then, the romance took refuge in the inner world. The only novelty of postmodernism is that the nonsense spread to the inner world. (Another twist Telefis). The postmodern man is deceived. Indeed the universe is an anthropomorphic sense. But there are directions storylines.
it is fashionable to deny all allegations and reduce evolutionary Hegel, as Hegel has no prestige now, then the argument of evolution is discredited. What arrogance to think that evolution is over and that what we are today is all there! What vanity! Stupid. It is looking very little.
The evolution continues, though the writers retrorománticos (and Mexicans) and academics (as Americans) will feel compelled to reduce any allegation of promotion of awareness to the terms of the past, Ironic, because they are a bunch of disabilities, from In the first case, the nihilism of the nineteenth century and in the other, the neo-Marxism imported from France, like it or not evolution continues. And that is life.
AR: There is a remark of yours that seems crucial: the technology is supplementing the function of thinking. In that sense, what epistemological project , Which also mention "a part of television?
HY: The first question here is: what is "thinking"? To think I mean the function that occurs in humans, but that does not belong exclusively to transform the fundamental reality (immaterial) objectual realities (the world as we perceive it). I mean think of as "noein."
Having lost the awareness that we are forming the reality (and that this construction is psychohistorical), we become obsessed with technology, fantasize about them (eg, movies) in charge of creating realities.
This corresponds to a mental law: everything we know of fantasy becomes .
The technology that paranoid (ie, from left) now attribute the "manipulation" of reality, or that (from right) we convince ourselves that we bring the New World, is only projective fantasy created as a result we have lost self. We do not know what is man. Some
because they follow the fantasy of God, and others because not even been able to reach that fantasy. The self no longer exists in millions, not even a symbolic level. Intellectuals are an aggravated case of this lack of gnosis of being.
funny thing is that the theoretical knowledge already exists today. It only remains to put it into practice. That is, the growth of conscience and became inevitable. It's about time.
AR: In the second booklet states it is for you psychohistorical status of Mexicans, the product of a mixture of oppression and submission due to pre-Hispanic era to the colonial conquest and the U.S.. Is that historical experience is endemic, characteristic of the Mexicans, or is shared or similar to those of other countries?
HY: Every culture has its own fantasy. Every culture is a particular fantasy (it's usually called "identity"). So I introduced this particular notion of what psychohistorical : to explain what it is, broadly speaking, the current Mexican is not one, of course, but it does share a psychology. As much as this will put the willies and pronounced dead that the "mass psychology" politically correct reasons.
The Mexican is dominated by fear. Fear spreads through verbal and nonverbal, through family and social structures, such as school or the media. The Mexican is a coward. And now hides his fear by playing carnival. Want to be convinced that what happens is not really happening to him, but he is already beyond this situation, for example, through crime, humor, music or gossip .
AR: From this experience I mentioned above, point out that the oppressed people has come to take refuge in the most conservative, the reactionary, which has led to kitsch has its best expression in the Net, the higher truth is supposed to have screwed (not in the strict sense of class). Have there been any, any alternative to this?
HY: Yes, there is. The formation of a true knowledge. Stop thinking that knowledge can only be hegemonic and that the truth will come of the "oppressed." In relation to this book have told me that what I propose is to break down the TV, no, that's an illusion. The technology is here to stay. What I propose is that we convert the television sets in autovisionarios devices.
AR: Much has been made of the process of democratization of the country, from another perspective, you find that we have finished a perfect teledictadura result of the conversion of government and politics itself in a show (up El Universal, in programs internet and television broadcasts the idea of \u200b\u200b"political spectacle") run by the Televisa-TV Azteca bipartisanship, which are those that actually have the power through the signal. Later point out that we live in a mob rule, a government of the populace. In this sense, how can move the country in cultural and political democratization?, Can be a real counterweight to bipartisanship TV?
HY: Democratization, as understood, is not the solution but the problem. We talked about democracy as if democracy that we live does not exist! That we live in, gentlemen, is democracy! Stop thinking that democracy is what real democracy is not. THIS is the "democratization."
We have to decide another way. The path is stop the fantasy of every one and stop the social fantasy. Personal fantasy is the self and social fantasy, "United States", not the nation as it is called, but the state psychohistorical that "America" \u200b\u200bstands.
give an example. We need to reform education, but the root. Form, first, thousands of teachers willing to change paradigms, to educate so therapeutic and peaceful political. Existing books and training methods for these pictures. Already being done in small centers worldwide.
then open special schools for persons elected, from childhood or adolescence, creative and intellectual capacity to give them a deeper education, based on work with self-healing, and creative action, concrete, material and spiritual, that will build the next Mexico.
have to reach an educational system which teaches ancient wisdom properly interpreted, Jungian psychoanalysis, psychogenealogy, critical history, gardening, meditation, architecture, development of green technology.
Those who are not interested or do not show the capacity to understand, give them that embarradita we call education. But those who have more capacity, joining them in special schools, track them throughout the country, ages and social classes, with the best teachers and libraries, to form self-realized beings elites, tens of thousands of them, carefully trained from young to take power and build a world where technology and wisdom are synonymous. Perhaps this sounds like nonsense. I do not care. I'm not talking to the ordinary mind.
AR: At the end of each booklet mention possible solutions to the Telefis, prison of the images and the dematerialization of the world and in the Mexican case, to our destination of domination in the first mention some wisdom and new spirituality. Can you make a sketch of them?
HY: Mexico will end its current leading to its ultimate degradation. This will happen in a few decades or, at most, a couple of centuries. Meanwhile is forming, slowly, a special knowledge, on the one hand, decipher what happened in the past millennia, how it was possible oxident was formed, and how was it possible for us now we are defeated, "because we are. And on the other hand, practical knowledge that will give us the tools to recover the creative forces at the individual and, therefore, collectively, to build another country and another world, to build new cities and new orders loving. The
writers are doing Mexican, European and gringos is bland. Part of a pattern of the past, a neurotic pattern. But there are other ways much more interesting, useful and spiritual.
* Interview published in Replicante , no. 16, August-October 2008. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
