I must have been four or five years old when, walking with one of my aunts through the streets of Liniers, the neighborhood in Buenos Aires where she lived, we saw a couple of dogs stuck together on the street. I don't remember what comment of hers led me to respond: But the dogs, don't they love each other? This first cousin of my mom, who at that time must have been around twenty years old or younger, had devoted her life entirely to studying, and she didn't know what it was like to go out with a boy until after graduating as a lawyer at twenty-three. She laughed at my comment and tried to explain to me that animals don't have that kind of feelings.
In some of my novels and also in conversations with people on the subject, I recall stating that when ‘art’ separated from ‘craft’ (if I’m not mistaken, in ancient Greece a single word defined both concepts: τέχνη), both became artificial and contrived. A sad fate for everything in the world we have conceived! When I pause to observe the behavior and thought of modern man, the term “artificial intelligence” seems redundant to me. After all, it remains created in our own image and likeness.
Without love, craft is not art.
Something similar happened with ‘interest’ and ‘love’ as with art and craft. For me, love is true interest, what drives us to try, to undertake anything, without being compelled by circumstances. Obviously, I am not referring to wasting time on vices, but to something that requires commitment, that stems from a fantasy, an illusion, and projects a goal, an end. Without a doubt, these are abstract concepts, part of our artificial world.
At least from the perspective of man, from his artificial and contrived analysis of phenomena, the animal is driven by its instinct for self‑preservation, which in theory was also our case before evolving into the lost android we are today. However, if we also stop to observe the human being, we see that most people merely survive: they break their inertia, change their habits, only when they are deceived through propaganda. This is possible because merely obeying, imitating the powerful, is still part of the majority's instinct, their only motivation.
Without love, interest is an instinct for self-preservation.
Many years ago I came to the conclusion (I mention it in my novels) that what has culturally been attributed to humans as distinctive compared to other animals is not observed in all people. And there are fewer and fewer who possess this special component, which, as my aunt taught me when I was a child, sets us apart from animals.
©2025 - Walter Alejandro Iglesias