[Chile / Santiago] - The Remembering Self Battles the Phantom of a Coup Legacy, Proving the Illusion of a Shared Past

Event Baseline: On the 53rd anniversary of the 1973 military coup, protesters and police clashed in Chile during nationwide commemorations of the coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power.

The self clings to a fixed image of history. One group worships the coup as the restoration of order. Another sees it as the origin of genocide. Both are defending a mental construct. The past is dead. The brain keeps it alive through thought. This division is not about 1973. It is about the present need to feel righteous. The self identifies with a victim or a victor. That identification demands an enemy. Clash is the inevitable output. Without the dissolution of historical identity, the cycle repeats. The only order is to remove the confusion.

The nation is a phantom. It exists only as a story told by thought. Those who fight for one memory fight against another memory. They never touch the raw fact of violence. They only touch their own image. The liberal self and the authoritarian self are mirrors. Each sees the other as the obstacle. The real obstacle is the belief that a story is the self. No coup is alive. No victim is alive. Only the thought of them is alive. That thought is a fire. It burns the brain. It will burn the country again.