#josemujica

Saúl Alvidrez: Pepe, what is love?

José Mujica: Love? At my age it is my habits and solace. Love has ages. It is volcanic when we are young, and at my age it's sweet habits. Getting used to everyday things that seem unimportant but that in the end are the only important ones.

Saúl Alvídrez: Professor Chomsky, how do you define love?

Noam Chomsky: Love is timeless. If we go back to Homer, the Greeks went to war because Helen was abducted. Penelope then wove for ten years as a way of delaying her suitors as she waited for Odysseus to return. Sometimes you can be waiting without knowing you are waiting. I waited for many years before I met my wife, Valeria, and I have discovered a new kind of love.

Saúl Alvídrez: You and Valeria have been together since 2014?

Valeria Wasserman Chomsky: Since 2013.

Noam Chomsky: It proves you can find love at eighty-seven.

Valeria Wasserman Chomsky: You were eighty-four!

— Surviving the 21st Century by Noam Chomsky, José Mujica, Saúl Alvidrez

José Mujica: My generation made a naïve error. We believed that social change was only a matter of challenging modes of production and distribution in society. We did not understand the immense role of culture. Capitalism is a culture, and we must respond to and resist capitalism with a different culture. Another way to put this: we are in a struggle between a culture of solidarity and a culture of selfishness.

Noam Chomsky: Well, it's quite interesting to see how culture develops. If you look at some of the greatest cultural contributions of the modern period, you'll see that they originated in some of the most horrible conditions that have ever existed. Think of the brutal repression of African Americans in the South, which gave us blues and jazz. The left should focus on creating the conditions in which natural human instincts can develop and flourish.

Marx wrote of liberating workers from their "animal functions" so they could focus on their human problems without the impediments, barriers and restrictions imposed by the various repressive societies, including capitalist society. Remove those chains and let people be free to explore their own natural instincts and capacities.

— Surviving the 21st Century by Noam Chomsky, José Mujica, Saúl Alvidrez