The fall of immortals

First posted: 24 march 2010

Philosophy is dead and we killed it, apart from some gleam of men appearing here and there (although a missing person) within the decay we are passing through.

Even at the universities, during the lessons, we can feel the burden of this immense loss. We study informations (dates and datas), occasionally, if we’re lucky, we can attend at “teachers-driven” lectures about a doomed attempt to persuade students to accept the tutor’s truth, who is forcing, squeezing and crumbling authors extrapolated from their context. We try to dig into the ground written words pushing them into a self-misunderstanding, disrupting and forcing to reshape themselves and to betray their own author.

Where – I wonder then – has the real question vanished? I’m searching for the man, but where is the man if the question has disappeared? Philosophy is a continuous asking, interrogation, collision, confront beyond the so-defined dogmas, that is beyond the certitudes we build around us due to a personal choice or to find a sort of comfort, but nowadays how many of us are willing to test themselves, experiencing their limits, taking the risk of getting lost along a forest? Although everyone tends to feel the elected, the demiurge of the situation, with arrogance, only few of us understand that it’s not important to know and learn something with an absolutly certainty but it’s more important searching, changing, not being static and having the courage to change our mind.

But how can anyone get surprised by anything in the very present period of time? We believe that the desensitization makes us stronger, but it makes us more schizophrenic than we are: the thrilling of emotions, the one that frees us from all these self-imposed chains made by society that builds cyborgs, is considered as something to remove from ourselves.

We can’t dream anymore: we just schematize everthing, even the feelings. We fall in love with someone by various calculations: as in a schedule, we choose our partner, according to her/his qualities without really thinking about what we’re feeling for that person. We choose our work because of money and according to the easiest way to advance along the career. We watch a movie and, instead of letting ourselves experience it, letting the heart beat following the rhythm of the sounds that floods us, listening to the flow of the film streaming in front of our sight, we ask about the meaning of the plot to understand the moral teachings, that “something” able to fix all the fruition into an interrupted and detached frame, something able to stop the film from provoking our emotions, teaching us to give an interpretation of the worlds where it is moving on (and while I’m writing this, I’m thinking, for example, of a filmmaker like David Lynch).

Art tries to rape us and we stand by impassively: nothing can touches us if it can’t hurt us physically, what an horror! (“The horror… the horror” Kurtz said at the end of the book “Heart of Darkness” by Conrad or, if you don’t know it, in the movie “Apocalypse Now” by Coppola).

We are proud to become like stones, to prove being strong in front of people eyes who, like us, are believing in the power of impassibility without the comprehension that, nowadays, the strongest person is who has got the courage to show his tears, because he frees himself from cages that make people repressed in a mental mechanism holding them in a vise and more and more leading to apparently senseless panic attacks.

We use tricks to withdraw from ourselves and to feel something we are unable to perceive anymore. We’re drugging our senses to feel us omnipotent and, at the same time, to feel that something we lost: but without heart and pain, dreams and tears… Does it make any sense that we try to exist as if we were immortal gods? Suddenly an aporia stifles us.

Some notes about the philosophy on "Parmenides" by Martin Heidegger

First posted: 12 march 2010

“Now, i will explain to you – and you’re supposed to keep listening and receive my speaking –

Which are the paths of knowledge (=the searching for the knowledge),the ones we can think of:

The first that “is”, and it’s impossible to define this “being” as non-existent

- this is the path of persuasion, because he follows the truth –

The second one that “is not” , and it’s a  necessary event that it “is not” (being non-existent).

And I will tell you that the last one is a path where nothing can be learned.

In fact, you could never learn the non –existent( what “is not”),

Being something that cannot be accomplished,

And you could never express it (by meanings) […].

Thus thinking and being is the same”.

(Excerpts by PARMENIDES’ «Fragments»)

It’s not a simple practise to make translations, “faithful, loyal”, mirroring  the original text, without altering or “corrupting” it and, in the meantime, making it suitable for a different time, context, culture, fitting it into a language, completely different than the original one.

In my opinion, the most important thing, while starting a new translation, isn’t  trying to understand the specific meaning of the word (term, idiom, etc.) we are going to translate, but searching for the inner significant concept beyond the mere literal text. So we could easily seize and “capture” the importance of those concepts, considered by a social, cultural, mental, textual point of view, focusing on the “environment” the text itself was composed in.

Let’s analyse the ancient greek word “αληθέια”: we usually translate this term with the correlative, corresponding  form “truth”. But, as the german philosopher Heidegger notices and explains in some of his essays and lessons dedicated to and entitled “Parmenides”  that  we should pay attention, keeping our intellectual efforts rooted over the initial prefix, called “alpha privative”, recalling the authentic etymology of the lemma itself.

In many modern and contemporary translation into different indo-european languages (or other families of languages), some interpreters and scholars neglect the importance of the “alpha privative”, making the text lose its original meaning, depaupering the core of the wisdom.

Heidegger suggested and offered a different type of translation, using the term “Entbergung “, in order to evoke the substantial theoretical background hidden underneath the evident textual reference; we could attempt to link the Heidegger’s translation to the concept and process of  uncovering and disclosing a concealed perennial truth. This effort oriented to the seeking of  “αληθέια” could also be connected to the process of “unveiling”; in fact, the ancient greek word “αληθέια” comes from the verb “λανθάνω”, meaning to hide, to conceal, etc. The “alpha privative” marks the effect of UN-veiling, of DIS-closing, of UN-covering the truth, a pregnant coexistence of obscure veils and shining clearing into forest “wege” (hidden paths).

At this turning point of Heidegger’s argumentation there are four points to underline and consider regarding this greek term:

1. Something “UNveiled” is given (as a precondition): if something “UNveiled” does exist, then there must be something “veiled”, but we are not allowed or supposed to know. Here the “Unveiled” is something to be preserved, as an occult covering of an original truth.

2. Coming back to the “alpha privative“,  we have to notice how the Un-veiling here is meant as an entity that can delete, cover or wipe out what is veiled, Un-disclosing it, or, in a paradox, it could even mean that the veiled doesn’t properly exist, but it’s the correlative side of the metamorphosis of the UN-veiling, that necessitates the veiled content .

3. So it’s originated a conflict, that is present and active in the essence of truth. According to sections of western modern philosophy based upon post-aristotelian rationalism, the annihilation of the veiled content is inconceivable, because the “nihil”, the void are included among the categorizing divisions of the negative topics.

Heavily conditioned by our scientific network of dogmas, we often forget that our western viewpoints are just a way to ponder over subjects . There are different perspectives, such as the eastern wisdom, taught by other philosophies, masters, forms of knowledge. For example, Schopenhauer tried to bring some studies about eastern traditions to the west, enlightening nineteenth century philosophers. He explained that a common human being could reach an ideal condition – called “Nirvana” – revolting against the “Wille”, the omnipresent “Will” that rules the events of human existence and dominates our fates. Through the fighting against this “Wille” we could proceed towards an alternative state of being, symbolized by the “void”. This sort of vacuity is not blamed as a negative condition, according to Schopenhauer tought. (It’s most of the western philosophical tradition that stigmatizes this “Void” as a totally negative degeneration).

The “Un-covering” has nothing to do with the systematic axioms of Hegel’s philosophy. German philosophical “idealism“ has elaborated a scheme to classify their conclusions. We find the triad structured by thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis. Other thinkers seem to match their reflections with Descartes’ studies. Here everything is subjected to the strict “law” of the so-called “Cogito ergo sum“. This “Cogito” is the divine self-awareness, so the divine transcendence of God states its perennial, immortal existence by accomplishing the act of thinking itself. Thinking is the logical dogma that justifies the existence of a divine God that declares its own power. This opposition between the mundane and the transcendent, between the augustinian “civitas dei“ and “civitas mundi”, between the perfection of the self proclaming god and the transitory human existence, between the “res cogitans” (god itself) and the “res extensa” (= reality, the world, the existence) is deeply confuted by Heidegger. He disagrees with Descartes about the Subject separated from the Object. The Subject is the “Dasein”, that is the human existing across time and space, and this Subject, when starts to care about an authentical type of existence, should attempt to listen to the “Being” itself, the UN-veiled “αληθέια”. This is the peculiar path an authentic human being should follow.

(“The concept of a self-aware Subjectivity, sure of its «ens» -entity- , doesn’t belong to the spirit of ancient greek philosophy. But it’s surely true that in the modern essence of the «subjectivity of the spirit» – that, if considered in a correct way, has nothing to do with the subjectiveness – is evoked the sound of the changed essence of greek αληθέια“)

4. “No other echoing resembles to the original echoing. The initial beginning is directed only towards the initial beginning. One isn’t the same as the other. And nevertheless both are the Same (Das Selbe), even when they seem to separate one from the other into the unmatchable divergent” (Taken from “Heidegger’s Parmenides”).

Here Heidegger means to refer to Parmenides toughts, quoted in the fragments i transcribed in the incipit. Reading both these philosophers we can notice how they state that, even if the veiled and the UN-veiled are separate and divided, nevertheless they merge and they are interconnected because they can exist only if they share a mutual relation

We all know that the light is opposed to the obscure darkness. They are two opposite poles, two different concepts and experiences. So we distinguish them and we think they are not compatible or specular. But ancient greeks (and most of eastern wisdoms and knowledges) explain that the shining light and the abyssal obscurity shouldn’t be differentiated. The “αληθέια” is a “coincidentia oppositorum”, not a dogma.

The morbid jelly of Italian country: vile corruption, ethics-annihilating viruses and the shining paradigm of the classic greek-roman Titans

First posted: 24  february 2010

Today some people said me that I tend to despise Italian culture and to sign the praises of the foreign one. They also try to point how, instead of the outlanders, we have got a direct descent of the great Roman empire.

Probably when I speak I can give the wrong idea that I’ve got this “forma mentis” but, if I have to be honest, what I despise is the present Italian society, certanly not the ancient, quite another thing.

My answer to this appointment, therefore, was: “I’ve got nothing against ancient cultures, neither Latin nor Greek, which I love, but, in Italy, we don’t know them well and, very often, people abroad is more interested in a specific way about them and they’re able to drain from and actualize the teachings including them in their society. Do you want to talk, I don’t know, for example, about Seneca, Petronius or Cicero or any other Latin author?”.

Currently the grammar high school is scorned and offended because it’s judged like an environment where people study the “dead languades”, or with a terminal illness. I wonder, then, why, for example, Nietzsche or Heiddeger have taken inspiration by the Greek language and culture if it was so senseless as it seems to italian people.

Perhaps it is the study in our schools based purely on learning mnemonic versions of the translations done in classes (or clearly copied/pasted from the Internet) and, later, attached to the tests without an explanation about the text (I would say the exegesis or contextualizing but they’re teminologies unknown by the teachers themselves)?

It looks like that we don’t understand what exactly the ancient cultures offer, and continue to teach, showing how to live in an ideal way, and I’m not surprised that this point is completely misunderstood by Italian people.

I have noticed that some people get really annoyed while hearing around (in people talking) about how our country, considered as a formal “society” (what a significant word… how many euphemisms i am using here! I wonder why…), is going to fall into complete ruination (such as being corrupted by an  infectious disease orby the typical “bacillus” currupting and spoiling books pages…) and about how we are currently deeply criticized by foreign countries, blaming the collapse of our ethics, for example: we give up realizing (and getting aware of) where we are gradually directing our steps (in a sort of no mans lands, where “licet” and not “licet” are the same, where there is no difference between morality and immoral acts, between ethics or illicit behaviours), and we are unable to realize that just because we ourselves are made of “debris and ignorance” (please try to feel the sound of the spelling in my original language, italian, “we are made of “macerie e ignoranza”, translated into italian… isn’t it like the sound of ruination itself?).

Fed up by television programs (just like chickens being stuffed) and sparkles, fragments  taken from italian news (daily “chronicles” contained in the most common and sold newspapers), we tend to miss all the real facts happening around the world, being news from the outer world something “missing” in our major newspapares and tv programs (there is an italian journalist, who has written a very significant and important boom about that, entitled “La scomparsa dei fatti”, “The vanishing of the news and facts”, translated by me; this journalist’s name is Marco Travaglio, a master of true journalism). We happen (sometimes) to hear or read about the news and facts coming from all over the world, but those news are reported manipulated or filtered by the “Big Brother” of our news agencies, so most of the news are altered and reported with no accuracy or precision.

Coming back to an old problem, already discussed by me (forgive my self-quoting hypertrophy), I am wondering about how many persons really know english language here in Italy… and I am wondering whether people educated in english, here in Italy, are used to reading english newspapers (or listening to their tv news broadcasting) or not.

Some days ago I bumped into an article reporting that Beppe Grillo (an italian famous comedian and a blogger whose mission is to divulge the most important facts and news without altering or censoring them) has been invited to Oxford university to “lecture” in comunication, diffusion of culture, the media, the italian problems and contradictions, about the “humus” surrounding our country. Apart from the fact that the italian embassy tried to diffuse some information against the reputation of this person (who is honest, sincere and guided by common sense), trying to make him appear less reliable and authoritative, they also quoted some of the comedian-blogger most famous opinions and words, blaming him for being a “dangerous” paradigm of an “anti-politicians” provocative troubles maker (accusing him of being a sort of professional “provocateur”). Some sentecnes and words of this famous comedian-blogger talk about how many italians, while living in foreign countries, are sure that they don’t want to come back to Italy, looking things from another point of view, from another alternative perspective, conscious of the faults and problems stuck and attached to the social/political pattern of our society and country. According to Beppe Grillo’s recurrent critical opinion, some italian, living in foreign countries, feel like “exiled” human beings, clinged to the “kindness of strangers” while being welcomed by foreign countries. Many italians cannot stand anymore the endemic state of corruption of our country, often hurt and “slaved” by criminal organizations (mafia, camorra, ’ndrangheta, etc.) and by illegals acts committed by the political bureau. (I think you all can recall the so-called “Tangentopoli”- the crisis of italian political/social system due to the curruptions and financial crimes, called  polis, city, of the bribes-that culminated into a series of trials directed by the famous Milano’s pool, whose members were for example Francesco Saverio Borrelli, Antonio Di Pietro, Davigo, Colombo, etc.

So after the eclipse of common sense,of rational thinking,of critical toughts many italians are sinking into the aberration of the nonsense, symbolized by the gossip news, by the lacking of true informations, by the meaningless and pathetic reference to our latin (greek) roots and traditions, as if italian people were all fond of learning about our cultural origins, as if our cultural traditions (the greek-roman source of knowledge) could be learned by osmosis or treasured into ourselves just like a sort of genetic “acquisition”.

2009: a railways Odyssey with Trenitalia

First posted: 24 december 2009

I don’t know why but whenever I travel by Trenitalia (the railway major company of Italy) something strange happens to me and, then, I need to write a short article about this “wondefull” company.
I’ve spent Seventy minutes waiting for “Frecciarossa” (the highest speed train here), in december, and this long waiting time in Bologna station (the city where i live at present) couldn’t even be compared with my arrival (by train) at Milan’s.

Obviously, I lost the coincidence (another quick train) to go to Genoa (my final destination). By chance there were two other train types (an intercity and a regional one): I started running, in a rush, (and I’d better inform you that the station itself was so crowded that sometimes I had the impression of a “procession” being the only one way to walk around through the hectic and nervous persons, move and reach the first available train) to take the first of them but it was blocked on the railways with 45 minutes late. The hilarious excuse, invented by the staff, was: “We couldn’t find the engine” … I suppose maybe someone had taken it putting it in his pocket and bringing it at home by mistake: after all, it’s so little that losing it is a normal event.
Before “throwing” myself into a regional train, which stopped in Genoa Principe (only 10 minutes late), I tried to ask the staff how to redeem the amount of money difference I lost (regarsing my original ticket) due to the huge delay forcing me to take another type of train, much cheaper than the previous one (thus wanting to receive a refund as soon as possible, after all the issues and problems I had to face during my travel, a sort of improvised odyssey through the italian disfunctional railways system). I asked it a group of five people about it; who they were chatting in front of the train that i was going to take: they looked at me without answering.
Then I found a guard who, to get rid of me, told me: “It’s better for you to take the regional train because we had to cancel the intercity departure, I don’t know anything about your ticket”.

When I arrived in Genoa Principe, I asked the information staff how to get refunded. Now I shall tell you something: here in Italy ordinary staff (in offices, customers services, public places, etc.) is often unkind, superficial, lazy… This time i met the so called “Kindness of strangers” (in this case, the behaviour of the staff lady), apart from the fact that there was no kindness at all. This time, the staff (“embodied” by that lady) was even worse than other times; she was totally distant, cold and For example, that predictable and boring lady kept repeating me (in a sort of hypnotic lullaby, as if she could use just two/three words to explain such a complicated and difficult situation where customers were totally disappointed by the italian railways system and paid services had been a failure without any apparent reasonable excuse) random sentences, involving the fact that extraordinary events (is winter snowing an extraordinary event in a civilized western country?) had caused all the problems and I couldn’t even hope for a refund.

I had paid and bought the tickets through on-line services and payment options so that “smart and professional” lady told me that for on-line services there are particular options making the refund really complicated to achieve. Well, in this contemporary era of new techs her lacking of professional skills and partial knowledge sounded really incredible and awful to me. She tried to persuade me that on-line services are considered to be an alternative way of payments so I had to apply for a special procedure to get my refund. Well, I tought, hasn’t the railways system and company received my REAL money through online payment? Are online billings and services virtual and holographic? Isn’t real money sent through those types of payments? I was furious and also very tired… so I gave up for the moment.
Later I checked, just to know, if I could do it (the procedure to get the refund) but it was impossible: the company site requires the ticket’s PNR (the code of the on-line tickets) but its program is automatic (it’s a browser page ruled by internal hidden codes of selection about who deserve or not the refund).

The apotheosis came when I had to take a train to come back to Milan (to take a “coincidence” to Venice) and Trenitalia guaranteed that all their trains during the afternoon were on time and regularly scheduled  but, “magically”, they cancelled the train for Milan of the 16.10.
I decided to travel back the day after, in the morning and, obviously, the information staff said to me again to ask for the refund with the on-line procedures, so I did it immediately.

But, surprise! The internet site didn’t accept the refund request about the cancelled train and, of course, it retains 20% out of the other ticket price amount (like the legal contract of the company said but in that case, because of the snow problems, the CEO of Trenitalia communicated (while being interviewed at a prime time news tv broadcasting) that the company was planning to refund all the customers.
So, I decided to write a letter to the complaints: they replied me assuring and confirming that they would refund that all the tickets without the deduction in my credit card but I haven’t got any money til now.

A final advice to all the users who buy tickets on-line through Trenitalia: If you are not sure that you can leave or you already know that there will be problems related to delays and connections you’d better opt for the for the traditional regular ticket (bought by the station offices).

Sex, Lies and Videotape... about a school project

First posted: 14 november 2009

Today I want to analyze the themes taken from an Audiovisual lesson. Let me explain: the idea is to create some short movies (documentaries) dedicated to the same theme, selected by the teacher, that is sexuality. In a second time, when documentaries are ready we’ll merge them together into a full lenght movie, sequenced by the streaming of each different short film thanks to the “Script Continuity”, whose goal is finding a leading main thread (I should call this project an highway to hell, considering that I decided to be part of this team and I had to develop the project helped by seven lazy persons that i didn’t know before that).

The topics created regarding the main theme are very heterogeneous such as sadomasochism, webcam virtual sex, self erotic acts, the concept of nudity, the progressive decline of the desire of elder persons (but, why should we necessarily think that at a certain age people become sexless?), the difference in the sexuality conception between Musilism and Catholics (I can’t understand this theme because each of us has got a different concept about his body; it’s not, in my opinion, a question of religious issues about faith and beliefs but it’s a physical thing), the conception of the Christian church, homosexuality, mate swappers, sex from a blind man perspective (because they think it’s interesting to compare it with our vision that it’s often supposed to be delivered and expressed through the scheme and classification of conventional images and theories, and the most degrading thing is that they want to interview him in a sexy-shop).

What did this groups miss?
I think that, to create a sort of entertaining show (where they could be the “creative gods”), they forgot the real beauty of sex, the simplicity that forms it and that my mates think as banal. We have forgotten that this simple act leads to an important consequence, our birth.
We didn’t understand the difference between sexuality and eroticism mixing them together and without knowing that the first is related to an action, an animal instinct, and the second is a purely human pleasure and rationally related to a sensual game.

The strategy of media (showing a very silly and superficial idea of sex and eroticism, in a sort of massive diffusion of a dominant, one sided vision of the subject), instead of making us like voyeurs, addicetd to prying through doors keyholes, and it helped us to forget the beauty of a simple and instinctive act: we are unable to live it in a natural way but we tend to put into homemade and quick schemes that reduce and lower the substance and meaning of the topic, being connected and linked to prestructured prejudices and presumed dogmas and models of knowledge because we have forgotten how to know ourselves and the others, suspended between a selfish “ego” and a complete neglection of others personalities, interests, needs, etc.

We fail to admit that we have just become voyeurs and “sex customers”, empty creatures totally unaware of the true nature of love, eroticism, sex, trapped in the cage made of our fears, formal doctrines and existential dilemmas.

The “status quo” that stifles my imagination

First posted: 11 november 2009

We live in a society of social climbers unable to work seriously on a project. There are only three categories of people, excluding some exceptions and those persons who are fanatically addicted to metaphysics, that is: who thinks to be a leader, who prefers to pretend to cooperate with others but, actually, is searching for an easy way to get his work done by others and and those persons who are dominated by the happening of casual events and incidents, without realizing that the day after they will need to forget the tactics and the strategies in order to survive and get a real life.
I made a wonderful experience with groups in the working activities with some mates: all the persons who wanted to work in our project with full interest about it or, just, because they were serious persons (dedicating every effort to do a good job), are ignored or pushed away by others who were just looking foward to get a good mark, underestimating the importance of team work and accurate ways of working together.
What will it happen if we keep the same behaviour in our future jobs? We have, obvioulsy, built a social structure and system full of stressed people, because they think to be oppressed by the world and because their goal is working the least they can, asking for others to do their job instead of focusing over it themselves.

The “magic” key word, here in Italy, seems to be “to committ” our own duties, efforts, hard works to others, taking advantages on honest and good persons (that are considered to be instruments chained to the will of immoral and lazy persons).
We are used to “cleaning our hands” without getting aware of our own mistakes, thus giving up doing something serious that requires and demands skills, efforts, concentration and management. Sometimes we could notice that most people happen to define some works and activities as impossible to complete, too difficult to achieve, as if those goals and works were just arcane nightmares, dark shadows of an hellish entity coming to defeat our natural defences and to subvert our inner mental balance.

Sometimes i feel that the tickling of time passing is something like an obsessive “paranoia” for some types of persons, that cannot manage to treasure the stream and fluxus of the waves of time, being overthrown by the sensation of anguish and frustration. Instead of seizing the day, they refrain from facing to face the real developing of events, missing the chance to transform their creative energy into some positive and original project.

How can we demand, therefore, to build a society where people work or, at least, live together in a constructive way if this project is tought to be impossible ” a priori”?

The moral “decorum”, the pathological sublimation of sex

First posted: 13 october 2009

At university, i attended at a class with required presence, called: Audiovisual Laboratory.

The teacher asked us to create some documentaries about the topic of sexuality in our society, this means how sex is perceived and processed in the present.

Each student was (only in theory) free to think about some ideas, concepts, subjects, which, then, could be developed with the other students.

My first thought, about this situation, was: “We’ll «slaughter» us one by one” because unfortunately the team spirit, when the exam is based on how you create the work, disappears and leaves its place to the unbearable attempt to “emerge” above all: a bad idea if you want to work in a prolific and friendly group.

However this is another story, now, I’d like to talk about the choice of subject: the sexuality.

I was thinking about this and I found, in my library, a book by Martha C. Nussbaum (“Hiding From Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law”) regarding the criminal incidents of acts against natural sexuality committed breaking the laws. When I read it I imagined a picture about all of us, in this society, hidden behing masks at the same moment that we’re ponting a man (or a woman), blaming them because they don’t conceal themselves while fulfilling and pleasing instinctual and sensual acts, not protected by fictious masks and camouflages. Sexual and erotical intimacy, coming from instinctual needs, are feared by some persons, because they are unable to cope with them in a natural way. A human being, capable of living his/her sexual needs with natural attitude and quiet mental disposition (without being affected by pathological deviances) sometimes “scares” us provoking disgust and sense of repulsion. His weaknesses and (apparent) “vices” are at large, in front of us, unmasked and frank.

We think to be different from animals because of our rationality; some of us are longing to tear away, throw out of themselves and remove all the instinctual pulsions and needs, which belong to our unconscious self, and that’s really part of us, so intrinsic and indelible.

We try to rationalize sex and instincts, to force the irrational side of our nature into something acceptable for the other people.

How many times do you think or hear someone saying: “It’s disgusting and sick”, watching a film where images recall, remind, or hide inside them something of sexual but not in an explicit way? It disgusts us, unconsciously, but we can’t realize what is really close to us:

Is it too hard to disclose our innermost desires, digging into our dephts, making it human or to understand that animal instinct belongs to our being?

The importance of television in our society

First posted: 03 october 2009

Some people, like me, are addicted to videogames, there are some who use common drugs (trying to smoke even tea bags or ideating a system to create a sort of opium with the poor poppy seeds taken from the edge of a polluted road), some people are addicted to being stressed and there’re some who prefer massification. To tell you the truth, what, in my opinion, worries me most is the last group that I define: “men without qualities”.

Without the passive and destabilizing use of television, these people cannot survive, they can’t concentrate during the study, they can’t even fall asleep (probably because they need to be lulled by the soothing voice of Bruno Vespa - an italian anchorman of a tv talk show dedicated to politics, with politicians discussing and debating about various topics and subjects) and they aren’t able to find a solution if, by chance, their precious survival set is broken.
It’s not important what sort of programs they usually watch, it’s the action itself, thaat is being in front of a television, that makes them feel good, relax, entertaining them gently and giving them the possibility to freeze their brain, that passively absorbs material devoid of substance, or the possibility to talk with their friends, socialize, and then they chat about useless topics, wasting their time (for example, you could hear them saying “Who’s who? Is that person doing the right thing? Is that famous person behaving well in his/her personal life?” and things like that, mostly gossip stuff). It isn’t the single act of a person (who, perhaps, after working all day long, is tired and needs to freeze thoughts, desiring to free is mind and having fun) that I blame, but the reiterating routine and the looking for an action of incapable de-individualized people where the only desire is to immerge themselves in the confused and meaningless “helzapoppin” of the tv smoky fog everyday 


I have the chance to observe groups of young people beyond my imaginary glass case where I place them: they live in a psychiatric hospital while I’m the researcher who takes notes, or, maybe, I’m a patient who secretly drinks a bit of “Milk corrected with mescaline (Milk plus)”, and the team of doctors try to bring me back to reality, unbearable for me (and I’m sure they would try to force me to accept the state of things, but they would miserably fail).
I need major themes, profound topics, depth, i am a seeker of intellectual efforts, but only books, and very few elected persons, lately, are able to share them with me: it’s a pain thinking that most people is trapped, blocked, frozen in a stall position where they cuddle themselves without consciousness.

In this situation, television becomes a paradigm of what I don’t want to approach, that is the android man, totally mechanic and cybernetic, compared to the true self, a human being fond of learning through art, books, travelling, etc.
Pasolini (and I’m sorry to talk about him because, too many people are deliberately manipulating his theories adapting them to their viewpoints and their frame of mind) realized what this medium was able to cause if used like a marketing “tool”. He wrote about television like a mean that, if badly oriented, generates the implosion and degradation of the tradition of our own idiom: today even journalists, in Italy, don’t know their language well.

The most disappointing thing is, however, reading an university essay and finding that: there is no consistency, the verb tenses change in every phrase or they’re omitted, there is no punctuation (maybe they think to be a new junior “Joyces”), there isn’t any knowledge of the syntax, and the spelling is to be deciphered or decrypted. We can blame teachers but this is a “disease deeply persistent and deadly” in the italian society: all people are suffering for it but they don’t do anything to remove it because they’re not interested in improving their own intellectual/cultural foundations, but they prefer to survive getting used to television programs.

Lolita's paradigm

First posted: 25 september 2009 

It’s really shocking to know that prostitution exists in our schools and that all are surprised (as if they lived in Wonderland’s reality or Narnia’s realms) to hear or read the daily news.

In nowdays living, the teens often ask for money for sexual favors but the difference between the present and the past is that now they don’t hide this unusual “transaction”, because they think it could be cool or trendy to prove their ability in earning easy money.

When our journalists started to talk about this situation, italian people got upset because they usually like to avoid the problem, close their eyes. They prefer not to listen people who talk about the “performances” of their little “babies” (used to advertising their sexual skills), but, in my opinion, they have to consider that.

Teenagers usually start to offer sexual favours at 11-12 years old (medium average registred statistics), so, they can buy something more, compared to their usual amount of usable money and (unbelievable but true) they’re not ashamed of this because it’s a completely normal thing for them.

For young teens, moms and daddies are not supposed to notice that (as if they were blind, or totally indifferent to the state of things), so, even if they discover the unconvenient truth, they never happen to discuss the problem or face the misbehaviour of their loved “kids”; in most of the cases parents (after knowing this unbearable truth) pretend to neglect it, convincing themselves that their little “angels” could never committ those uneducated, immoral, vulgar acts. So the relationship between crazy chicks and their parents usually is surrounded by a useless veil of conformism, conventions and unsaid reprovals.

Then, a bizarre and idiot thing (recurrent in Italy) is that the media, the public opinion, etc criticize and blame customs, habits, social routines of other foreign countries (for example attacking nations such as the States, taken as the main reference of a country whose model and paradigm spread and diffuse bad habits, trends etc); this is the common way to skip the truth of the real facts and to create a sort of general catharsis by naming a public enemy (symbolized by foreign countries habits and customs) to defeat in order to preserve the integrity of our own country moral and ethical principles. 

Today in Italy (that is the specular product of the so-called “Berlusconi’s “age”, that promotes a sort of self made Italic prototype of ideal citizen, moulded by the gods of consumerism, money addiction, simulacra of power, greed, superficial appearence and self regulated market operations, homemade and irrational, directionless) sex is still a taboo: in the familiar context it’s very difficult to talk about it, according to parents opinion, it’s an ashamed topic, at school sexual education is ridiculous because, like at home, teachers aren’t prepared to have a mature speak with their students. Another very bad thing is that many guys don’t want, absolutely, have a virgin girl because, in their opinion, she requires too much affection and care, and, so, girls now aren’t interested about who to sleep with (they just do the thing by  removing their rational control and their moral principles, in a sort of self imposed consciousness’ blackout), then if they’re paid them it’s obvious that they should feel smart because they had a monetary income.

We also have to consider how our society is currently set on the competition basis, whether sexual oriented or not is largely irrelevant: the girls start to compete with their shool mates or close friends to see who can be the winner in the cycle of exchanging favours for money, and they can also have fun while gaining some coins, so why not to try that? They know the risks of their behaviours, but they believe and pretend to be older than their age as the majority of children/adolescents aim to prove.

Now, let’s concentrate on the “money factor”: we live in consumistic era where, for example, our parents try to spend more than  they can afford in order to be able to buy expensive stuff (that would show their economic prosperity as a status symbol of success).

Many families suggest to their kids to attend at universities that tutor and educate students in scientific fields, such as medical business, engineering, economy, marketing etc. This prejudice (about first choice universities and unimportant and underestimated ones) affect humanistics in general, considered to be losers’ universities, due to the fact that the future, eventual jobs obtained through humanistics backgrounds and curricula usually (in my country, Italy) are less paid.

So, they have in mind a sort of equation like:

Scientific Universities = Solid work plus Moneys => Living without worries plus Don’t work much = Ideal Life

I wonder why, in Italy, the number of registered students is quickly decreasing. I also wonder why the guys tend to give this big importance to money, thinking that prostitution (that teens prefer to call “not for free” dating) is one of the easiest, quickest and smartest way to obtain “money spending” customers.

In the end my personal conclusion could be summarized like that: Lolita (not the literary little nymph described and invented by Nabokov) was an “heroine” that played a significant role in the middle class crisis (and the main tragic character in the fall of the intellectual aura of the erudite, academic researchers) and we can say that Lolitas nowadays still exist, with the evident difference that they belong to the the dangerous process of degradation and moral collapse which are submerging the intimate patterns of our society.

Tripping in the traffic nightmare

First posted: 19 september 2009

The car: our status symbol. What could we do without it? How could we survive without this vital transport? How much would we miss its “closeness”, its “understanding”, its “hopeless” noise, our efforts to kill ourselves darting in the middle of a country while a little old lady is crossing through the street and a child is following a ball behind her? Surely the first feeling, could be panic, followed by cold sweats, blazes, loneliness and depression.


Obviously, without car, we can’t follow our son to school because the building is too far: after all, 300metres are endless, during this terrible and hard path we also might stumble or take a tile on our head. Going to shopping, in such a condition, it’s impossible: it’s better if we start to live with “bread and water” (thanks to the bakery under our house) or, instead, we could try to use internet and our credit card even tough we have always been against those strange devices.
We might go to the gym and solarium, or pool… absolutely not, or yes, or not, or yes … and here it comes an illumination, because the needs to lose weight to be more sturdy and then, in our opinion, to be more accepted in our society and at ease with ourselves, it pushes us to discover that there are other types of transportation (and not only our car): buses, metros, scooters, bicycles, and something that we couldn’t even image, our legs.


Slowly, forced by all this situation, you’ll realize that it’s not so bad: you’ll also feel lighter and more in shape after a bike ride or a walk. The stress traffic disappears: those horns, the process of being in a hurry heading out of the mess and that never-ending quest for a free parking vanished, leaving us a sense of ethereal peace (caused, probably, thanks to the Prozac, that we took because of the depression caused by our being without cars, to whom we sooner or later get addicted).
We’ll feel like Heidi surrounded by goats and we’ll skip along the main street of our city enthralled by the sense of new freedom, just tasted, and finding the same traffic cars on the sidewalk: hellish pedestrians walking like in a funeral, people watching from all sides and coming out from the shops who bump against us, and your desire it’s just to run away from that but it’s impossible: there is no escape but only the chance to cover us in some shop or in our apartment that is too far from our actual position.


We’ll try in vain to jump on a overflow bus to be able to enter there (long live to sardines!), we’ll look around disoriented and we’ll start to think about our lovable car: the place where nobody can stand on us or scream in our ears, and where we could stay sit down to shout against the world.
We’ll feel like dieing because of a slight panic attack, you will begin to run desperately to the only spot where, we are thinking, the oxygen passes, we fall down to the ground without forces, completely submerged by the city traffic and while trying to breathe, that mouthful of air, people, attracted by our illness, will gather together around us to see, understand, take an interest in … and you are left breathless, we’ll wake up in our bed, soaked, cursing the night before when we had the fantastic idea of trying an acid to relax.