Mariella Gattini

Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, tried to correct Trump who insisted on calling a town devastated by a monstrous fire Pleasure instead of its actual name of Paradise. There they were, both of them standing on the wreckage of Paradise, with Trump suggesting that the solution was to rake the forest, when the fire had been sparked by electrical transmission lines, due to a systematic and deliberate lack of maintenance of those lines by the company that owned them, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E). Those faulty lines caused the deadliest fire in California history, according to a PBS SoCal FRONTLINE piece titled Camp Fire: By the Numbers. In the news, I saw the video of Mr. Newsom trying to correct the then president to no avail. The governor later talked about this event in a late-night show for the amusement of the entire audience. Raking the forest, really? And Pleasure, not Paradise. Probably because, in Trump’s mind, like in the mind of many men of his kind, those words are interchangeable.

If you think further, it has its logic: In a world where moral and ethical behavior is mocked and called “a ministry of truth,” pleasure is the ultimate goal, nothing compares. So when faced with the word paradise, long associated with the religious promise of eternity in a perfect world after death for those who abide by the rules of a particular dogma, the closest associative word to it is pleasure in a primitive, distorted mentality devoid of ethics and morals. So, when an internal world of that kind is faced with reality, it turns that reality down flat, because it does not fit the structure of that world, which only consists of the most basic instincts that need to be satisfied at every turn, and reality is usually more complex and requires a deeper analysis and introspection.

When this mental world collides with the reality of others, things like the tech industry leaving San Francisco happen, a city facing the most incredible economic and social crisis ever experienced before. Why? Because the tech industry is neither following nor supporting the needs of the masses. At this point, it is protecting the needs of the individuals who have made billions of dollars from the masses’ information, aspirations, and dreams that are never going to be fulfilled by that industry, by design. For the few beneficiaries in that world, bunkers are not good enough anymore; life in space is the ultimate goal, and an expensive one. That’s why some of them have to buy politicians who function like little soldiers protecting their interests, slaves of these individuals’ unethical, dispassionate and detached view of the world, a world where people like Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell fit like a glove. Moreover, these people have total disregard for human life, even their own, in a self-destructive intent that is pushing all of us to a tragic end, simply because they feel too vulnerable in the real world.

They are especially afraid of women—there lies their profound misogyny—because we are naturally social creatures, who find identity in our relationships with others, and these men could not be less interested in the fate of others. These few technocrats, who have amassed a shameful amount of money, do not find value in the human race, since they think that everybody else is beneath them. We don’t actually fit in their science fiction little and narrow world, unless we are there to spread their genetic makeup, stroke their egos, or are available for their personal entertainment. They marry, get together, or work with female bodies, and don’t deal with the human inside those bodies, because those female humans are too disruptive of their perfect little and fragile internal world, where they see themselves as the dominant race. At that level of wealth, women are deemed possessions that can be disregarded, replaced, or upgraded with bigger and better parts.

If you think I’m too harsh, you are making a fundamental mistake, because these are simple observations in troubled waters, with no judgement whatsoever. This is a simple portrayal of a world void of meaning, because when you get to that level of wealth, nothing is ever good enough. And the real world becomes too cumbersome to deal with, a world of inferior people, deemed worthless. If they read this, after every little description of them mentioned above, they would say, “Let’s see, me, me, me.” and they would have a good laugh about it. Yes, because they are also shameless.

In this country, people believe that being intelligent is the same thing as having skills. However, human beings can be extremely intelligent and possess no skills whatsoever, in the same way that the skillful can be a true dimwit.

Coding is a skill, making money is also a skill, skills that have nothing to do with human intelligence or mental superiority of any kind. That’s why the tech world is in collision with the world of entertainment right now, because they are used to telling people what to do without complaints and to treat their workers as discardable things, but now they are faced with the reality of others organized by unions! How scary!

The problem is that you can not treat artists the way you treat engineers or programmers. Artists, in general, do not create on command, because their talent is intrinsically connected with the real world that surrounds them and the human beings they interpret, so it’s their job to follow that world’s natural rhythm. True artists are not afraid of that world, let alone of women, quite the opposite, they find value and inspiration in the reality of gender diversity. Writers in particular are directly connected with the real world and the messiness that that world invokes. You could break a wild horse, but that would be the end of the intrinsic value of that horse. Artists are animals of a different nature who are committed to dealing with the world just the way it is, and they might create their own illusions in their private lives to be able to overcome the sour part of life, nevertheless, they are always ready to expose themselves for the right cause in the real world, which is always scary because it’s unpredictable and random, but it also is extraordinary and wonderful.

So next time, ask yourself, pleasure or paradise? If you don’t see the difference, you probably are an immoral or amoral, unethical individual, who probably live your life in a very narrow fraction of your brain that has an infinite capacity, but you don’t really use it. If you see the difference between pleasure and paradise, you have already realized that neither is the answer, right? Pleasure is the satisfaction of your basic instincts, and paradise is the illusion of a promise used to create allegiance to a group of people in power. What is the answer? You tell me, but since it would be irresponsible on my part not to take a stand, I would say that I care about the 85 people who died in the town of Paradise simply because a company put profit over the value of human life and the value of nature. That company even declared bankruptcy to avoid taking financial responsibility for that horrendous fire.

On the other hand, I choose to face the real world everyday, because it challenges me and helps me grow as a human being. The world around me seems indifferent and full of cynicism, but it’s truly palpitant and alive, so my approach to it is at times hesitant, but never devoid of honesty.

Like everyone else, I belong to the diverse world that surrounds me, and I want to be part of its preservation despite its pitfalls, because life is more than what we are able to perceive at this point of our human development. For that reason, I’m always open to the reality of others, since that allows me to have a more profound and complete insight of human nature.

Besides, life always comes to an end, so I don’t see the point in accelerating the process. Sometimes, it’s hard to keep going because we live encased in a temporary body, but despite the fact that it is prone to infections and decay, it is constantly helping us in our imperfect, tentative exploration of our sense of self.

In a world where money becomes meaningless, my question to you is, who would you be? Would the end of money be your pleasure, or your paradise?

Horseman, 1947 (Bronze)
 
This piece was created by Marino Marini (1901-1980), and belongs to the Norton Simon Art Foundation. You can see it at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California.