It’s a question, not an answer.

I must apologize to my few remaining readers and viewers, but the older I get the less interested I become in politics. Someone once said that politics is “Hollywood for ugly people”, and it is true in more than one way — it is, in fact, little more than theatre, play acting. None of it is real. The real deals happen behind closed doors, away from the media, between people you’ve never heard about.

But the masses like to pay attention to politics, because of all the drama. So it is what it is.

In the last video, I said that the 1990s were cool, or, at least, better that what came after in the 2000s, but then someone from Russia said, “No, the 90s sucked!”

One funny thing I found, is that, no matter what you say, there is always going to be someone who disagrees.

In any case, of course I was mostly talking about the American Empire — you know, the US, Western Europe and South America. The part of the world that was under the Iron Curtain went of course through a different timeline. And Eastern Europe was always a different universe.

Today I tend to think that the Cold War was mostly fake, and that the same families basically ruled both systems, but still, they were very different systems, and so in that context it made sense for Western Europe to be allied with the United States. The politicians and the companies got their money and people got their individual freedom and their consumerist paradise.

But now, what is Europe getting from the US, except being forced to buy American weapons, American gas, to have American military bases, to be involved in their wars and to import their multiculturalism and their increasingly weird culture?

I’ve lived in the US, in South America and now in Europe, and the decay in all three regions is very visible, but most especially in Western Europe.

So, Europe could only gain from leaving the influence of the US and the Anglosphere, and have more friendly relations with China and Russia. It just makes sense, even because of resources and geographical proximity. Also, China and Russia are not perfect, but they do not seem so interested in promoting, you know, multiculturalism and gay marriage as moral imperatives.

Now, notice that I am talking about China and Russia, I’m not talking about BRICS. I don’t think Brazil and India are ever going to be very relevant, except maybe as regional powers, and South Africa not even that. But China and Russia are going to be very relevant to Europe, and I don’t think Europe gains much by making them their enemies, just because Uncle Sam said so.

Of course, the main problem of Europe is spiritual. They just don’t believe in themselves anymore. They don’t believe in their traditions or their culture. They believe only in angry climate gods. Hedonism and instant gratification and consumerism is all they care about, and they can’t even be bothered to reproduce. Abortion for the young, euthanasia for the old.

So unless the culture can change in more profound ways, I don’t see any future, regardless what happens. China and Russia are just more confident cultures right now. Europe is old and decadent, in more ways than one.

But, then again, what do we know? Maybe something else will happen, something that we still don’t quite know or understand. Maybe things will change. Maybe Europe can be saved. Let us hope. Let us pray.

And which recent decade was the best?

Recently there was a discussion online about which decade was the best: whether it was the 1960s, or the 1970s, or the 1980s, or the 1990s. And I noticed something interesting: that no one mentioned the 2000s.

Sure, it’s still early, and the discussion was mostly among older people who grew up or were young in those earlier decades, but I have the feeling that not many people in the future will have very fond memories of the 2000s, 2010s, 2020s. Because those decades were and are mostly awful. Even for young people, or especially for young people.

Will anyone be nostalgic about the 2020s? What’s there to remember? The Covid stuff? The permanent wars? Increasing censorship? Growing social disintegration?

Currently it’s a pretty bad period for young people. The economy, at least in Europe, is going from bad to worse. Germany, which used to be an economic powerhouse, now has negative growth and record unemployment. France is even worse. People are not having children anywhere and the whole of Europe is being taken over by foreign migrants.

Europe was for decades considered as a safe place, but in recent years I’ve known of several people in England, Spain, Italy and Germany who have been mugged in the streets, or worse. The governments have brought so many migrants from Africa, India, South America to replace their own population. And, guess what, now Europe is having more and more crime and dysfunction like in Africa, India and South America. Who could have guessed, right?

The job market everywhere is awful and growing automation threatens to put everyone on the streets, at the same time that they cut all benefits, and buying a house is impossible for the young. So, yeah, things are looking pretty bad.

And it’s clear that the 1990s were the last “happy” or at least the last memorable decade. Also because it was before social media, which in fact has been a catastrophe for social relations, and people still met and talked in person. White people were still a majority in most Western countries, and social degeneracy hadn’t progressed all that far.

What happened after that?

The 2000s were completely taken over by 9/11 and terrorism paranoia and war, and even the more well-known movies from that period were all about that, such as for instance the Batman Dark Knight movies. Then the 2010s, I can’t even think of anything very distinctive about those years. Well, I guess there was Breaking Bad, and a few other things, but nothing that makes as think of it in terms of a culturally unique decade. And the 2020s, well, it was marked by Covid, war everywhere, and now AI.

Not a lot of memorable things in terms of film of music, but I don’t really watch a lot of modern movies or listen to modern music, so I wouldn’t know. Perhaps Squid Game, signalling the end of Hollywood dominance and the raise of Asian productions, but, to be honest, the series wasn’t even that great or original, and the ending was awful.

But let’s go back and talk a little bit about the previous decades, before the deluge.

The 1960s

Recently I was re-watching some episodes of the 1966s series “Batman” which I remember watching in my childhood.

I didn’t grow up in the 1960s. I’m old, but not that old. But in the 1980s, when I was a child, we didn’t have streaming, we didn’t even have cable, and a lot of things in network television where I lived were actually reruns of older series. So I grew up watching Batman, Bewitched, Jeannie, and so on. The pretty women in those series were my first crushes.

Julie Newmar as Catwoman was amazing, and seeing her again now in my middle age, I can see better why. You can mark the decadence of the intervening years just by looking at all the later actresses that played Catwoman. Not one of them had the same sexiness or humour or poise or charm. I mean, I love Michelle Pfeiffer, but I preferred her in other roles. Newmar is Catwoman. And I don’t think that she was even a great actress, it’s just that she was perfect for that role.

The impression I get of the 1960s is that they were a fun time to be alive. Sure, it was the beginning of the long march through the institutions, and of course there was already some brainwashing even in those early TV series, but it was just the very beginning, and most things were still pretty innocent. Batman and Catwoman don’t even kiss.

The dialog is surprisingly literate for a children’s show. Batman uses a lot of fancy words and alliterations. Even Catwoman at some point says, “it is time to separate Damon from Pythias”. Even I had to search that one, and it refers to an old Greek myth about two inseparable friends. The point being that at the time, people tended to have more culture and would still grasp such references. If you watch game shows or talk shows from the 1950s and 1960s, you will probably be surprised to hear how articulate and elegant most people were. Compare it to how people talk and dress today. It’s like another planet.

So I think the 1960s was a good decade, even though it was the start of the process that lead us to today.

The 1970s

The 1970s had good things in terms of music, and some of the best films were made in this period, both in the US and in Europe — remember when there was such a thing as European movies? — but it was also a period in which the cultural brainwashing started to be more direct.

In retrospect, the 1960s seem very naive. Peace and love, free love, yes, but in many ways it was all still very innocent. But in the 1970s, things started to get dark.

For instance, the whole androgyny thing started to be pushed hard in this period, as well as hard drugs and satanism. In many ways, the 1970s were like a dark version of the hippie 1960s, even if it still had some good things going on.

The 1980s

Probably the 1980s were the peak decade of the modern Western world. I was still a small child during this period, but I have fond memories of the 80s. As a child, I remember playing a lot outside in the streets and having lots of fun.

And of course you still had access to the best that had been produced in the 1960s and 1970s. But the 1980s were still a very distinctive decade. You had great films, great music, there were some great alternative indie bands, there was a sense that something new and beautiful was starting.

Even TV was good. All my 1960s TV crushes were suddenly replaced by Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting, who seemed like the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. And it was probably the golden age of sitcoms, even if, of course, brainwashing was already on overdrive, but it still wasn’t as bad as today.

There was some exciting new technology, such as the walkman and computers, but of course people were not all the time glued to their screens as they are now. Mostly, I think there was a good balance, and it was a time of unbridled optimism.

And, if in recent years there have been a lot of shows about 80s nostalgia, it is because the decade really was memorable in many ways. So, for me, the 1980s gets the vote as the best decade, even though I am more of a 1990s child.

The 1990s

The 1990s, as I said, was the last “happy” decade. But was it really that happy? Its most distinctive musical movement was so-called grunge, which had depressive songs with dark lyrics, and its main star, 27-year old Kurt Cobain, used heroin and ended up shooting himself in the face. So, not such a happy period in many ways. Movies also started to have a darker tone. On TV, one of the most memorable shows, at least from the early 90s, was Twin Peaks, and it was good but it wasn’t exactly light-hearted.

But it was still before social media took over, and people still seemed to be having fun, and going to parties, and the women still tried to look pretty instead of being, you know, angry and fat blue-haired feminists full of piercings and tattoos.

Do young people still go to parties today? My impression is that most people just stay glued to their phones. Even when they go to parties, they still stay glued to their phones and can’t wait to go home. And children rarely play outside anymore.

So, I don’t think many people will be nostalgic about the 2020s, but there is hope that, you know, in the 2030s and 2040s and beyond, there is going to be a new Renaissance, and things will start to recover and get better again. I am probably not going to be here to see it, or if I am I will be too old to enjoy it, but I hope that things get better again, for the sake of today’s children.

On coincidences, Swedish movies, and polar expeditions

1. Strindberg, August

At a small local bookstore here in Spain (Catalonia), I saw a brand new edition of August Strindberg’s Inferno with previously untranslated texts and a beautiful cover in black and red, so of course I had to have it. The few remaining readers of this blog may know that I’ve been fascinated by the crazy but brilliant Swede even before my first visit to Sweden in 2022, and that I even published a selection of texts from his Blue Book (it can be purchased on Amazon or Barnes and Noble).

A few days later, I watched “Raven’s End” (1963), by Bo Widerberg, a very interesting Swedish film from 1963 about a dysfunctional family living in housing projects in Mälmö, and here Strindberg’s ghost appeared again in the form of a statue, during a visit of the young protagonist to Stockholm.

Then, thanks to the algorithm, I watched yet another Swedish film, “Engineer Andrée, Balloon traveler” (aka The Flight of the Eagle, 1982), with Max von Sydow, about an ill-fated Swedish balloon expedition to the North Pole. The film itself is not that great, just average, but the story is interesting. It was based on the real story of three Swedes who tried to reach the North Pole for the first time in 1897, using a balloon.

One of the three adventurers is called Nils Strindberg.

Now, in Strindberg’s Inferno — at the time he is in Paris doing strange chemical experiments while his wife and daughter are in Germany — August writes that he has just received a letter from his wife, who has read in the newspapers that a certain Mr. Strindberg plans to fly to the North Pole in a balloon. She admonishes him to give up on such a reckless adventure, equivalent to suicide.

He replies explaining that it is not him, but the son of a cousin who is doing it for the glory of science.

(Speaking of glory of science, not many people know that August Strindberg basically invented the “selfie” in 1886. Well, not really — the first self-portrait had already been made by Robert Cornelius back in 1839. But he invented one of the first working self-timing devices, with a tube connected to a camera, which allowed him to take hundreds of self-portraits of himself and his family before it became all the rage in 1899.)

2. Strindberg, Nils

The story of August Strindberg’s cousin is interesting. He joined the expedition as a photographer and second in command, despite the protests of his fiancée, Anna Charlier (at those times, women were not very keen on their fiancées or husbands joining dangerous polar expeditions). During the travel, he writes to her several letters.

The first one through a homing pigeon, although it is not clear if she received it — apparently, the pigeons were not trained to find their way back, so many messages were lost.

The second one, in a tin can thrown from the balloon over the island of Vogelsand, in the Svalbard archipelago (Norway). This one, so far, has never been found.

Nils kept writing several other letters to his beloved fiancée, but since there was no way to post them in the Arctic, they remained with him.

The balloon came down in the ice pack, still far from the North Pole. The three men were stranded on the ice for almost three months, hunting polar bears to survive, and trying to walk back home, all the while pulling their heavy sleds with provisions. They walked miles and miles, hoping to get back to civilization, but they never made it. And for years, no one knew what happened to them.

3. Anna’s heart

In the meantime, Anna, after waiting 13 years, married an Englishman and moved to the United States. They had no children together, and, it is said, she never forgot her first love.

In 1930 the remains of the three adventurers were finally found when a sealing vessel passed by chance near the island of Kvitøya. They found the remains of a tent, three skeletons, the journals of the three adventurers, the letters that Nils wrote to Anna, as well as several cans of undeveloped film, which later reveals all photographs taken by Nils documenting their incredible journey.

By coincidence — although one could say that there are no coincidences in such things — Anna is in Sweden at the time that the remains are found. A few weeks later, there is a huge funeral procession in Stockholm, with at least 100,000 people, to which Anna, now back in the US, sends a wreath: “to Nils, from Anna.” She also receives from a common friend a copy of the letters that Nils wrote but could never send. A picture of Anna and a locket of her hair are also found next to his cold dead body.

Anna dies in 1949 but she has one last wish, which is granted. While her body is buried in England, next to her husband’s, her heart is removed and cremated. The ashes are placed in a silver box, which is placed next to Nils Strindberg’s ashes, and both now rest together in a cemetery in Stockholm.

How’s that for a romantic ending?

4. Mountains of Madness

The finding of the explorers’ remains gave raise to several speculations, generating studies and novels about exactly what happened during that time, and it also served as inspiration for several other stories — including, for instance, H. P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”, written in 1931, which starts with an ill-fated polar expedition, only that in this case it is to the South Pole.

Apparently, one of the reasons for the failure of the 1897 balloon expedition was that it may have been rushed and overlooked safety issues. However, the main organizer, the engineer Salomon August Andrée, obtained too much money and support and may have felt that he could not simply abandon or delay the quest without deluding his financiers and supporters, who included Alfred Nobel — a sort of Elon Musk of that time — and the King of Sweden.

In 1897, there were still new technologies and unexplored corners of the Earth, and brave adventurers eager to discover them for fame or fortune.

Today, by contrast, in the age of hype and AI, everything seems fake and there is little personal risk involved for the adventurers, except perhaps of being found in some kind of scam or deception, or the whole thing made with AI and CGI. But that’s a whole different story.

On improvement and its limits

“Try again. Fail again. Fail better”. This is a quote by absurdist writer Samuel Becket that is usually interpreted in a negative way, but I see it as actually positive.

First, let me preface that by saying that I am no great fan of Becket. His existentialist plays are among the most boring things ever produced by mankind. I don’t go so much to the theatre — it is expensive and usually disappointing these days — but I like reading plays. And I even enjoyed reading plays of some absurdist authors, such as Ionesco. But Becket’s plays are boring even as reading material. Almost as boring as waiting for Godot himself. But — well, I like that sentence. It’s a good one.

Applied to art, or really to any process that requires extended effort, it means that you are going to fail many times, but eventually are going to improve as well. You learn by failing. You are always going to fail, there is no such thing as a complete success, but it is slowly going to get better. In the end, all you can do is get closer to an ideal, which functions as a lighthouse guiding you, more than a final objective. Which reminds me of another quote, I think by painter Salvador Dali: “Do not be afraid of perfection. You will never reach it”. He was a megalomaniac bastard, but he was right.

I am very far from perfection, or even from attaining a decent quality, but I see that there has been at least some improvement in my painting, and that is, at least for now, sufficient. Each new painting builds on the lesson of the previous failure and becomes better. This happens even on the same painting: I usually tend to work in layers and each version becomes better or at least more refined than the previous one.

This lesson, in theory, could also apply to our personal lives, but in practice I haven’t seen this happening. There, it is just failure over failure and we don’t seem to learn anything from our previous mistakes. Like the dog returns to the vomit and the fool’s bandaged finger returns to the fire, we always tend to repeat the same errors one way or another. I believe this is because our our broken, sinful, human nature. “From the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight can be made”. I think this one was by Immanuel Kant. Can you change human nature? No, you Kant. (Sorry for the bad pun).

And of course, in social and political issues, since we are dealing with a collective of crooked humans, the exact thing happens — mistakes are made and repeated over and over and no one learns anything from them. Things change, but we don’t see much general improvement, except perhaps for brief times and in very specific periods. That’s why I think the “progressive” view that sees society as perpetually evolving towards some utopian social ideal is incorrect and stupid. There will never be an “utopia” on Earth. However, the “conservative” view is also wrong, as there is no “utopia” back in the past either. The best we can hope for is some sort of resignation to our imperfect natures and making the best out of it.

But I digressed and forgot what was the point I was trying to make. I think, mostly, that you can improve your artistic skills with constant practice, but the same is not completely true in “real life”. Although, even there, some small improvement may be possible.

Ah, no, there was something else: what I mentioned about painting is valid mostly for realistic painting, where you are trying to copy a model or a reference, although I suppose it could apply to modern abstract painting as well. By the way, I don’t think “realism”, whatever that is, is the main quality of a work of art or even a good objective to have.

Sometimes I hear people say, “wow, what an amazing painting, it looks like a photograph”. That is the mark of a philistine or an idiot. As if an accurate representation of another two-dimensional illusion was what art was all about. Most of the modern hyperrealistic paintings, by the way, are really boring, reproducing random prosaic objects or human models in extremely uninteresting poses.

The great Renaissance masters such as Leonardo, Raphael and Botticelli were not “realists”. Their paintings certainly do not look like photographs. But even the later masters of the Baroque, such as Velázquez and Caravaggio, who were the closest you may get to a “realistic” representation of human figures, are not realistic — if you look closely into their paintings, you will see that some details are done just with a couple of brushstrokes. Painting is all about illusion, not reality.

Okay, let us finish this absurdist soliloquy with another quote, this one by Kierkegaard, illustrating the difference between how people see us and how we see ourselves. Thanks for reading, and see you around.