Familiar Weakness

I usually work from home, so on the days I go out – for example, to go to a library in the center of Madrid – I have the social nicety of dressing up. On Monday I was wearing a leather jacket, a striped T-shirt, jeans and some boots that I don't usually wear because they have too much heel. The detail matters because, like many other people, I had to walk home after being evacuated from the library due to the power outage. I'm used to walking kilometers, I'm in good health, and I wanted to see what was happening on the streets: this long walk, therefore, shouldn't have posed any physical problem. But the heels made me feel weak. Weak and angry. Vulnerability is this. A slight weakness that on a bad day we discover can have enormous and unforeseen consequences. Yesterday I verified that an entire country can collapse due to a failure in the electricity supply, and it is scary to experience such dependence: transportation, economic activity, communications and the internet went down. All our mobile phones magically turned to stone for a few hours. Technology can make us vulnerable in more complex ways, indeed, but it also makes us more resilient: fortunately there were there, as a backup of civilization, all those layers of previous technologies that were never completely abandoned when we advanced and that did not allow us to fall completely into chaos: power generators, the radio, cash, bicycles, notebooks and pens, batteries, flashlights, books, card games, gas stoves, butane bottles, landlines, SMS.

How many thousands of years have passed since we had candles? Lately we vindicate analog technologies that help us disconnect, and this forced blackout has been revealing. When we face what is important, we do not miss the entertainment of the networks, but the simpler functions of the mobile phone: calling our loved ones, having maps to orient ourselves, listening to the FM radio that simple phones included before and now they do not. The vulnerability of our civilization confronts us with our own vulnerability. Health matters: being able to walk and climb stairs on foot, not needing medication or a ventilator, being in good mental condition to face the unforeseen. Others matter: living in a big city or in a village, having a network of neighbors, friends and family, not being alone. Money matters: it usually brings the workplace and housing closer together. I was able to get home on foot in a reasonable time because I still live a human distance from the center, but on the way I met disoriented people trying to get to the southern towns. «And now how do I get to Leganés?», a woman next to me asked in the library. I know someone who walked 25 kilometers from Tres Cantos to Usera. Nonsense also mattered, pure luck, such as the fact that I had gone out with cash that day.

On the way I was surprised by a strength and a weakness of our hyper-technological society. He who has a car with fuel has a radio, and some taxis and private vehicles parked on the sidewalks with their doors open so that anyone could hear and be informed. On the contrary, it despaired me to see that some employees were not going home because they were unable to close the electric blinds of the businesses. This specific progress does not allow rewinding. When I finally got home, with slightly sore ankles, I found my partner not looking at the phone, but reading and listening to the radio. The relationship we have with the information that facilitates us to make the right decisions also influences our vulnerability: I feel a little sorry that I was right to buy a few months ago the solar-powered battery radio that calmed us down, and the girlfriends with whom we met, all afternoon. The situation was serious, especially because of the uncertainty, but I could not avoid living Monday as a gift day, enjoying the sun and the privilege of being a citizen of a country where people are more concerned with having change to drink a beer than with looting shop windows. I also remembered all those adventure movies that I watched in the 90s, where they were dressed as explorers and they were wearing very unsuitable heels, how stupid and resilient they seemed to me then.