After the World Cup festivities, I read to Gabriel J Zanotti refer to our “kilombeity” in a positive way. He said, rightly in my opinion, that this way of being saves us from being Nazis. One could add that it allows us to be creative. On the other hand, in the workplace, it is not uncommon to hear how difficult it is to have employees, or more precisely, to let yourself be led or led. Obedience is not our thing, because -in part- we always believe we are better than our boss or we envy him; such is the case that the good and bad that we have collectively gestated does not seem to arise from compliance.
On the other hand, winning the World Cup made notes emerge in gushes inviting the company to imitate the virtues of Messi and the efforts of Scaloni. This waterfall of notes prompts me to propose three questions or reflections.
The first, why did Messi “go through each of the Argentines”? as the journalist said with emotion Sofia Martinez. Messi embodies the Argentine collective desire: to be the best, to be better than the others, but by acclamation, not just because they believe it; and above family and friend. When I refer to collective desire, I am referring to a deep, identity-based motor, not totally conscious, difficult to conceptualize, which emerges on social networks in the phrase “Argentina, you would not understand it.” In this sense, Messi had always been conceived under the effects of that Argentine Eros and in an eternal advent, he already passed through us as an exemplary idea, as vital èlan; the little lion only came to embody it, to make it come true – what more could you ask for to celebrate.
Second, do we need that messy (disordered) passion for political life? I understand by life in the polis, not only to vote in the elections, but to be an active part of the social fabric.
Although the soccer phenomenon can be politically capitalized on, civic life bears little or no resemblance to soccer -and not only because there are 22 playing on the pitch and 80,000 watching. Let’s review two -extreme- images of the festivities: the naked woman near the Obelisk and the two who dropped from the bridge onto the national team bus. Eros and Thanatos, passion and death; “We are destined to suffer” said several of the players. Soccer and its fans are closer to the roller coaster of the lover than to political life; closer to art than to production; closer to Carnival than to Lent; closer to dying -with or without glory- than to everyday life; closer to the desire to abandon the struggle for life, than to build, sometimes in the desert, organized, common goals.
The third question is about that great gathering that has been seen in the world championship celebrations. Is it the appropriate clay to mold a national agreement and get out of effective anarchy? It is worth remembering that games, since time immemorial, have had a sacred character for human beings. They have always been considered a separate space, a suspended, extraordinary time, where a whole symbolic world is activated that replicates the battle against the powers of death, enemies and the confrontation of various unforeseen hostilities. Therefore, it has a certain anthropological reasonableness, that everything stops at the World Cup, so that the sacred game tells us, like an oracle, once again, if we are capable of being reborn or at least of continuing to live. And for the same sacred reason, what happens there – as “qatarsis” – cannot be applied like this, without more, to the works and days, to ordinary time.
Messi conjures the wishes of “the two cities” in Argentina, the one that celebrates the holiday and the one that detracts from it; he combines eros, passion and suffering of death, but also results, achievements and universal recognition; Zion and Matrix. However, infecting each other with that desire that identifies us does not make us Messi or La Scaleneta, or a social body.
Although many of us suffer from the “unrecognized genius syndrome” and believe that there is no meritocracy for each of our geniuses, we are not -or at least we are not acclaimed.
We need to be able to create more intermediate organizations (productive, cultural, etc.) that weave the social, not to come together, but to coordinate with others, articulate with others, achieve with others and find there something of the necessary social esteem; there where probably more than 22 geniuses work and there are no fans supporting you, but who value in various ways the contribution of your abilities to that little great common good.
by Maria Marta Preziosa
