Who could tell us, a year ago or so, that that kind of tank with which we cover the lower half of our face -- lips, nose, chin -- that leaves no more than an eyebrow, like the Saudi Arab niqab, would become something unquestionable and inevitable for any decent West?

There are resistance, of course, which some claim is not scientifically proven to be effective in preventing the transmission of viruses, or that it causes serious problems in other areas of health. Serious studies have also been conducted that have been able to ignite some alarms (e.g., the recent Corona children studies "Co-Ki": First results of a Germany-wide registry on mouth and nose cover in children. O Do not put a face mask on children, I said that adults who fear children place the interview) Some – we all know them, I am not going to use the cursed word here – remind us of the doubts of the WHO and other reasons, but it is clear that all this must be discarded for a simple reason: because the obligation of niqab or burka is not something that must be “scientifically verified”. It is a question of another area.

Lust

The key to this issue was the words of the prestigious Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han of March 2020, when he was seeing that we did not have the means to produce and distribute masking masks in Europe. Hane said in his article, translated into all the major languages of the West, published in the major newspapers: “In European countries, hardly anyone uses face masks. Some of them are, but those are Asians. My fellow countrymen living in Europe complain that they are stared at them strangely when they are taken away. Behind that is a cultural difference. In Europe, individualism prevails with the habit of bringing one's face to face. The only ones who act masked are criminals. But now, when I look at the images of Korea, I've become so used to seeing people masked that the naked face of European countrymen seems to me to be almost grievous. I would also like to bring a kiss, but here they are not” (The viral emergency and the world of tomorrow. Byung-Chul Han, the South Korean philosopher who thinks from Berlin, said El País on 22 March 2020). For them, therefore, the problem is “cultural”: bringing the face to view is linked to our individualism. “As an Oriental not touched by individualism,” the unfathomable kisses of Europeans are almost obscene.

The violent campaigns and the punitive measures of a few months – complaints, fines, layoffs, jails… – have been enough to put an end to the cultural abyss that distinguishes the “Western individualists and the Eastern collectivists”: for us, the unveiled kiss is becoming hurtful.

They were lascivious, at my mother's time, girls who left their knees in the air or, in the swimsuit, women who dared to take a bath at sea. It is an obscenity to show naked feet in China – it was not obscene, on the contrary, to tie the girls’ feet until Mao banned it, although in some corner the old custom still persists. We are publicly ashamed of the appearances of our genitalia, and we consider it obscene to those who do so consciously (who said that some crazy philosophers who had been in ancient Greece made love and urine in front of everyone: “dogs” – cynics – were nominated for it). The first job the European missionaries took when they found an Amazon tribe was to hide their shame, which was the most obvious sign for Christians that they were in the hands of the Enemy of Hell – decades passed, while massacred, in the deep theological disputes in which it was decided whether or not they had a soul. We are ashamed of nudity and moved by being indecent in the eyes of others – I have dreamed several times that I am naked on the street and it has not been a very nice feeling.

But the male rapist does not find it obscene to show his swollen penis and, after his prowess, he may get well and kiss his wife and children tenderly. Even false weapons – stabbing, pistol or gun – are not harmful when used to kill the enemy, as our humanitarian public budgets demonstrate: we do not regard our body or its technical extensions as obscene when we use it as a weapon of command. It is true that we find it difficult to draw precisely those limits and we are increasingly using the word “obscene” or “gross” when we talk about children dying of starvation, raped children, humble mothers who cut their stomach and murder with a knife… Something similar was felt by the Swiss banker Henry Dunant on 24 June 1859 at the Solemon. From their reaction came the Red Cross, at a time when wars were fought hand-to-hand. People are later killed in another way, and the only bomb that was there was enough to leave over 100,000 dead bodies in Hiroshima and to injure so many others seriously. I don't think I get the impression that when an American soldier drives drones from a Las Vegas bunker, as if they were playing the Play Station, to destroy the people who are in the celebration of a wedding or a baptism in Afghanistan, they're making a mess. The invisibility of people and their screams, their blood and their viscera is capable of counteracting any feeling other than pride. We are becoming increasingly ruined to see animals killed in a slaughterhouse, but not to see cooked meat on the plate – our butcheries are becoming more and more pharmaceutical.

Returning to our body, we find obscene those that appear on the skin in the form of viscera: penes, figs, lips, swollen nipples… We all have a difficult relationship with our bodies and those of others, and that forces us to search for the right distance. Even more so with those of us who consider ourselves an erotic part, because we all know that their perception or use brings us into contact with our deepest, troubling and difficult aspect to control: our richest side. Therefore, for those obsessed with the discipline of people's customs, they have always become a field of permanent confrontation and strict regulation. It is also true that we have gone from disciplinary societies centuries ago to a model of social control that shows and promotes a new state of mind, in which we are exaggerated towards compulsive consumption and, within it, towards the exivition and enjoyment of hyper-eroded bodies that appear as goods. To stay on the skin would suppose to think that these two models are opposed, as they are activated in an alternative or complementary way.

Breath

The lungs would be the most important survival organs, as they are the only ones that have a direct relationship with the outside. The other four (heart, liver, kidneys and pancreas–spleen, in the Chinese tradition of the “five organs”, but there is no difference in modern anatomy) have no direct contact with air or skin, and it is not surprising that in this tradition the skin and lungs are of the same organic system. If the breath stops, we die immediately, but it is the only vital function that, in addition to operating automatically, can also function voluntarily. It is also the most flexible and “emotional” fundamental organic function, which, in addition to adapting to our metabolic preferences, adapts to our mood. The autonomic nervous system regulates these metabolic functions when we sleep or get sick, for example, by prioritizing detoxification, and it's more subtle than we imagine: for example, he prefers to breathe through the left or right nasal hole, alternating for a few minutes, and in this way gives priority to one or another cerebral hemisphere, even if one doesn't realize it. Fear inhibits or speeds up our breathing and so does the rest of our emotions. Therefore, any change in breathing shows and conditions the general condition of any person, not only organically or emotionally, but also with a direct impact on all our cognitive or mental functions.

Anyone who has observed one's own breath and that of others knows that our breathing ability is transformed into a function of the situation: we do not breathe in the same way in a quiet, spacious environment or in a toxic environment. The chest is the diaphragm that separates and binds the chest and abdomen and the main respiratory muscle that separates and binds the belly. Like breathing, it's also regulated by the autonomic nervous system, and like it, it can be controlled intentionally. Unfortunately and unconsciously, most of the time we carry the chronically blocked diaphragm, especially when we're awake. This blockade causes breathing to be heavier, as chest tightness requires greater effort than diaphragm freezing itself, progressively decreasing breathing to a small oscillation, that is, to the upper and superficial part of the chest. Its consequence is apathy, congestion and the feeling of vague or obvious confusion, emotional or mental, what we call gray, linked to the loss of vitality and paleness, increasingly evident, making our faces harder and harder, more gray, more fragile.

As has been said, this is evident to any observer, who is well “scientifically proven”, but let us not be mistaken this time when we talk about a mask. How can we be so relentless and condemn anyone to deadly contamination if we can save ourselves by covering our mouth and nose, as the surgeon does in his work? Do we not position ourselves, those of us who oppose this indiscriminate measure – even in the open air and with no one at all, refusing to walk masked or hugging the aquatic environment – instead of those midwives or doctors who refused to wash their hands that could prevent so many deadly infections in births? Yes, that would be the case if the general masking was a concrete and coherent measure requiring a balance between the favourable and the opposing parties ... But studies that can establish rational criteria will not come, and the grotesque fight between “responsible citizens” and “negationist sociopaths” will remain, as we are weighting very crude – obscene – points. This issue, however, is not limited to this. Because the new roof has been installed as a fascinating fetus, and the new priests of the Scientific Religion, with the help of all those who strive to control the population, will not easily give up this charming roof.

Kiss for long, if not forever

The kiss has come to stay with that warm sweetness that the word kiss added: “Emoixtaxu muxutxue, maittie…”. It's a brand too strong for any power system to give up on it: all those covered faces that constantly remind us of the real or fantastic threat, that automatically alert us to the other (don't come close! don't touch it!) and that, at the same time, justify blind and irrational obedience giving way to a general and normalized state of emergency, have not been imposed to disappear from day to day.

Furthermore, – and perhaps the most effective feature for its approval – when we cast the kiss, we automatically put ourselves among responsible and supportive citizens: the innocent. And on the contrary, when we don't use it properly, we line up with the evil ones, cheers and irresponsible -- but, well, we know that almost nobody does it right. Who honestly changes their own kiss every several hours, or use expensive filters to increase the effectiveness of those on the mask? The instantaneous messages of the apologists of the mask – and forget to have a voice in a public place if you do not want to highlight each other – naturally link their use to dignity, minimum responsibility, solidarity: “Getting out of this extreme situation depends on the responsibility of each of us” is the sacred mantra.

Suddenly, we magically equalled and automatically the perpetrators and all the others of the crazy system that leads us to the precipice, and among them, the millions of people who, in the name of progress, are torn from their lives and condemned to live every day in the midst of a landfill. Well, the latter is not entirely concrete. People condemned to live in hell with lethal pollution, infections and chronic famines have a much more serious responsibility in the disaster, as they jeopardise our immunized, “virus-free” bubble, with simple existence: they are guilty of the unforgivable crime of not yet being dead.

Even if only for these last reasons, due to the great political functionality of the current main fetish, rigorous studies will not be conducted in any situation and everywhere to assess the pros and cons of the use of the mask. The same thing that no research is done to determine, at every historical moment and civilization, what is most hurtful and what it is. The weight of the functionality of these violated decisions automatically turns them into “common sense.” Mozala is too effective, too musty a tool that pushes the abyss with terrible power and makes “health measures” essential to face the situation.

I wish my perception would have been wrong and wrong in everything I said!