Jorge Daly

CONVERSATIONS THAT MATTER

My friendship with a man who lived history with Jorge Daly

Jorge writes

This is the story of a most remarkable man.

It is a fictionalised history of a man fated to live in extraordinary times. Born in the epoch of empire, three decades after the Prussian-led unification of Germany, he was a living testimony to the fast-pacing, deep change that revolutionised societies in the 20^th Century. He embodied its struggles. He never flinched from its challenges. He bore witness to its glories and horrors. As Dickens says, he lived the “best and worst of times.” He navigated the times with uncompromising independence, fiercely committed to uphold his principles, true to his quest to serve the underprivileged of the world. When he departed, economies and nations had been transformed. And yet, he remained skeptical until the end about a true transformation of humanity.

Oskar is the name of the central character. For the sake of explanation, this short novel is divided into two main parts. The first part covers life in Berlin from 1919 thru 1933 and in London from 1934 thru 1939. It depicts his struggles as a teenager, his joining the Communist Party, the friendships he forged, his role as editor of the Party’s paper Red Star, his trip to the Soviet Union that ultimately led to his rupture with Stalinism, his flight to London and from this city to New York in the eve of the War. The second part “jumps” to 1994, in occasion to his return to Prussia, to look back to his life after the War and even of key episodes in the 1930s that are purposefully left unclear in the first part. A review of his file kept by Stasi helps uncover the mystery.

The novel depicts a fascinating journey that would have been blunted were it not for the presence of critically important dramatis personae. They supported, helped, and even protected him. Eckhart is his best friend, from childhood, who takes a sharply different path in life. Unlike Oskar, Eckhart never leaves Germany. Ingrid is Eckhart’ sister and future wife of Oskar. While at the helm of Red Star, Oskar has two young collaborators, “Polish” and “Alsatian,” both card-carrying members of the Communist Party who will reappear in the second part of the novel (1994) in most unexpected ways. Yiheng is a Chinese-born woman. Oskar meets her in 1929 and she becomes a colleague and girlfriend. They are very close. Both fled to London, lived together, but she opens up to the mysteries of mysticism that would ultimately change her life, dramatically. They both must leave London in the eve of the war, Oskar to New York and Yiheng to Shanghai and remained separated for 55 years.

The novel concludes with a reunion of Oskar and Yiheng which, of course, is very, very moving. The 20^th Century gave scant chances for two close friends of different continents to reconnect after 55 years. But a much larger lesson is revealed. Oskar, a supporter of the Cultural Revolution, meets face-to-face with Yiheng, one of its victims. How would these two friends handle the reunion? The meeting opens up possibilities that Oskar had not contemplated in his life. It points to inquiries that may lead him to find answers to questions and problems that he could not find with his brilliant intellect. To answers that reveal what and how humanity is truly transformed.

PS) The novel is written is Spanish and was completed in March 2021. It is still unpublished.

Videopost for June 2021

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Excerpt from the novel in translation

Berlin, End of the Great War

You wake up and the new dawn informs you that the world you knew has ceased to exist. No longer does a Kaiser rule, nor does a Tsar in Russia, nor an Emperor in Austria who did not know how many languages were spoken in his domain. Europe lies in ruins, but the good news is that Germans, Frenchmen, Russians, Englishmen, Belgians, Austrians, North Americans, Italians have stopped killing each other. Sure, it is just for the moment, naturally. The bad news is that nobody is happy. Everywhere you look there is chaos, disorder, violence. And hatred, plenty to dispense with. Quick, quick, we must build something new, a new order that will cement peace between nations. Let’s get busy then, welcome the 14 points of President Wilson and the promise of world prosperity. What a shame, it is not relevant that this statesman will go down in history as one of the most racist presidents of his country. Also welcome is the Russian Revolution and the promise of an end to the exploitation of one another. Nor is it relevant that one of his leaders was an aspiring priest, bank robber and poet’s apprentice who populated the cemeteries of his country. In the rush, who wonders why the old order collapsed? No, don’t waste your time educating yourself on the many theses that were investigated and continue to investigate the causes of their collapse. Make no mistake, they all enrich your intellect. You have the right to delight friends and strangers by displaying your knowledge. But if you are asked what doctoral theses and books give us the guidelines so that hecatombs do not repeat themselves, you will not know what to answer, right?

Instead, explore another path. Ask yourself what lies hidden in the contrast of Gustav Mahler’s Symphonies No. 2 (1897) and No. 6 (1906). Be interested in the spirit that animated him when he composed them: why the choirs in No. 2 sing to the Resurrection: “Oh Pain, that you penetrate everything, I am liberated from you, oh Death, that you conquer everything, now you are conquered”, and why less than ten years later he put an end to No. 6, The Tragic, with three hammer blows. Was it not a premonition of the coming storm, that Europe was condemning itself to relive a terribly more Dantean version of the Thirty Years’ War? Ask yourself why a great musician and perhaps anyone who does not shy away from inhabiting silence can penetrate the veil that hides the demonic forces that animate the insane behavior of human beings. If you don’t ask yourself those questions, you won’t understand how and why worlds collapse. Worse still, the less you will understand on what bases we build the new ones. Unfortunately, we do not realize that the great architect of both is the Attila we carry within us. We do not realize it because we walk like sleepwalkers, very, very far from that state of consciousness that inspired Mahler to give musical form to “pain that is transmuted into conquered death.” To the promise of what is eternal.

Human beings were never more lost than in the 20th century. Man was a relentless destroyer of human and non-human forms that were pulverized and continue to be pulverized without contemplation. A human being lost by his unconsciousness, never more detached from that purest and most real essence that was embodied in Mahler when he composed the Resurrection. But at the same time never more protected from his own insanity because, come on, isn’t it a miracle that after the incineration of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki we are still alive? Not asking ourselves this question indicates that we are still lost, guardians of a state of consciousness that establishes and normalizes collective insanity.

Those sleepwalkers of the 20th century count rich, poor, rulers, educators, academics, writers, professionals, workers, clergy, countless people from all backgrounds. Among them also sympathizers and militants who gave their lives to the construction of a world that they wanted just. Many were inspired by the Bolshevik promise, a few did not ignore their crimes but tried to justify them, and a handful who early broke with the creed never gave up in their struggle to serve humanity. Our story begins with one of them, a young man who was born in 1904, and ends with him 90 years later. Almost a century. The terrible century that he lived.

About Jorge Daly

Jorge says about himself:

I hold a Ph.D. in Political Economy. Drawing from of experience in providing advisory services to international development agencies across the world, I foster ethics-based transformations of individuals, private firms, public sector institutions, and non-profit organizations.

I provide deep understanding of issues that unfold in the intersection of consciousness, ethics, businesses, and the emerging new international political economy of our times. My tools to induce lasting, transformational change in individuals and organizations, combine the rigor of method with timeless insights of great thinkers, classical writers, and spiritual teachers.

My professional experience spans eighty countries: all Latin America except Cuba, and selected countries of Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Africa, and Central, South and East Asia.

Currently I live in Washington DC.