Project Vision 21

In this time of transition from one historical era to another, when truth no longer seems to matter and, at the same time, nothing appears to carry enough gravity, in both senses of the word, and almost everything becomes superficial, I cannot help thinking about Metamorphoses (or The Golden Ass), written by Apuleius 1,800 years ago.

In that work, the protagonist, Lucius, a Roman aristocrat, is transformed, metamorphosed, into a donkey without losing his human consciousness. In his unexpected condition, brought about by his own actions, he is subjected to every kind of hardship, from slavery and misery to exploitation. In the end, Lucius becomes so desperate that he asks for divine help to regain his human form, which he eventually does.

The book’s point, in this irreverent and picaresque work, is clear: transformed into a donkey, Lucius experiences the oppressive reality that, although unknown to him until then, was everyday life for many others. That discovery, experiential rather than merely cognitive, leads him to his third metamorphosis: dedicating the rest of his life to transformative religious experiences.

Returning to the present, I sometimes think and feel that each of us seems “trapped,” as if by technological magic, inside a reality in which we can no longer fully express our humanity. We may think about or remember, increasingly less, our humanity, but we cannot live it. And we no longer have a divinity to whom we can turn.

About 200 years before Apuleius, in another book also called Metamorphoses, the Roman poet Ovid presents numerous transformations of gods and human beings. But the greatest transformation, recounted at the end of the book, is that of Emperor Augustus from a man into a divine being. Only two centuries later, the greatest aspiration was simply to recover one’s humanity.

Much closer to our own time, at the beginning of the last century, yet another book titled Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka’s, eliminates even the possibility of recovering our humanity after becoming not donkeys, much less gods, but “cockroaches,” that is, undesirable and repulsive monstrosities. And we are still enclosed within that condition.

In Don Quixote, Cervantes taught us that it is possible to lose one’s sanity and later recover it, as Alonso Quijano did, but only after experiences as surreal as those of Lucius.

Now, when truth has become irrelevant, post-truth, and when no subject is considered relevant, post-gravity -thank you, Miguel Wiñazki, for the neologism- we are as trapped inside technologized “donkeys” and “cockroaches” as the Daleks in Doctor Who are trapped inside their technology.

That is why, at this moment of global metamorphosis in which post-truth and post-gravity intersect, these works remind us that we once wanted to become gods, then merely to recover our humanity, and later our sanity, only to finally resign ourselves to becoming monsters. It seems that our metamorphoses have run out, or perhaps they have not.

Perhaps we are undergoing a metamorphosis from humanity’s childhood into its adulthood. Unlikely, but hopeful.