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.

Straw dogs? Few simple steps to put a correct imprinting over the owners…

I was eight years old and I was walking with my loved dog taking him on a leash; I remember the paralyzing fear at the time when I saw an alsatian coming towards me and the terror when my dog, getting rid of the collar, attacked it to defend me and and ruling the situation, I screamed but and none came or appeared.

I lived in a rural village where nobody, even now, has learned not to let their dogs free on the street.

Today owners are forced by the law to put an underskin microchip in the neck of their animals, cats, dogs, horses and so on.

This thing, in theory, should prevent the owners from abandoning their pets but it’s useless: if the animal gets out of its residence region (sometimes even out of the province) the signal doesn’t work anymore being out of range (this means that if, unfortunately, we lose the dog away from home, so we won’t find him, being unable to catch the signal emissions).

Apart from this digression on missing/abandoning animals (unfortunately an usual thing in Italy), the real focus of the discussion would be the use of muzzle.

I realize that a lot of dog owners are opposed to the use of this rash medium, because they often think that their dog is a “good guy”, but if the size of the animal is around twenty pounds, I think most owners would be better use this mean, the muzzle. It’s my personal advice, based on common sense.

I don’t think that a pedigree make a dog good or bad but the important thing in the education of the animals are their masters’ behaviour: each animal, like every living thing, has got its own character and its education could be established according to its character, this doesn’t mean that it’s born good or bad but that in some cases we need a steady hand and maybe in another situation it is better to be sweet and calm with it.

A lot of people, here, think that their dog an evident symbol showing a sort of social status position (a strange kind of hierarchy of conventional symbols of mass deception) so this “men’s friend” become a sort of tool to distinguish themselves from the others: they don’t learn to know it and so, “once upon a time” a lovely dog rebels against strangers or against its own master.

Some time ago I remember that I was impressed to see and a sweet Saint Bernard changing the eyes’ expression, at the moment that the hand of his master was touching  his head, I had the impression to see a flash of hatred for that man and, so, I asked him if this big puppy had bitten someone in the past: sure it did it! It bit the hand of its master (probably as a warning, otherwise some suture points couldn’t be enough).

One of my dogs, for example, “hates” children: they did so many tricks on her, with the silent complicity of their parents who looked at me astonished when I asked them to move away from the fence because my dog could bite, that I never bring her near a baby and I also pay attention when I walk with her on the street (always and strictly on leash) because she could bite someone without fear (I think it can be considered a natural reaction of her, feeling the instinct to bite naughty kids, but the rational and strict control of the owners must be vigilant over their pets, in order to guide them and limit their inner instincts).

Short Circuit

First posted: 30 december 2009

I was sure to live in the new century, after the end of the twentieth, the era where technologies should be our daily routine and our own “food”, the time when all of us can get used to managing innovations, present and upcoming.

I’m looking around, lost…

We’re just entered into a university class where we have to follow a lesson about HTML codes and so we need to use computers. A young girl, that I know (she’s about twenty years old), comes near a pc station, she looks at the computer screen and she decides to move into another place, changing her seat and position. I asked her why she had changed her mind so she replied: “The computer doesn’t work”. I said that it was just turned off but she didn’t try to turn it on, she changed her position and she was happy.
This is just one among a lot of examples that I have noticed over the years.
We are all convinced that young people passively accept all the technologies and that they interact more easily than older people, but I’m not entirely sure.

I think that the predisposition and the inclination to learn how to use technologies could be an individual frame of mind rather than a matter of ages: Michelangelo Antonioni, a famous italian filmmaker, when he was old, loved and tried to explore, new technologies concerning the new frontiers of innovation and progress in the movie realization, industry, production; he seemed to be interested in that, feeling the same pleasure and excitement of a child while playing with snowballs in his early years.

Perhaps the main problem is not technology, but it’s the difficulty in understanding it, and I’ll try to explain it in a better way: today, our society “teaches” us to seek immediacy, we haven’t got time to lose in the effort to understand how something works, we should cope with factual things, with situations, etc. achieving our goals with personal skills (acquired and improved by studying, learning and analyzing all that we need), because, unless we try to do that, we could fail, trapped(like “innocent”, unaware, dull victims) of time passing by and of oblivion, burdening our capacity to link our actions to reason and common sense (with a grain of salt, we should say). Or should we fall into the collapse of thinking and logical tought?
For this reason, every time that the majority of people, both young and old (and, believe me, they’re more than you can imagine), should approach some new technological inventions they’ve got only two choices: they can avoid the “obstacle” prentending not to see it or they can take the instruction manual and try to understand (with a dramatic sensation of hard working) where is the start button that, (that is usually placed just under their fingers moving all around,directionless), but this last solution is the least popular and potentially it’s taken only when they’re forced by circumstances.

Everything is becoming a waste of time, we try to run so fast that a flow freezes our thought, fantasy, or relief, swallowing us and, in this way, making us “neurotic”.
In this way, even the technology that, on a theory level, should help us to lower the intensity of stress becomes our worst enemy but, also, becomes a status symbol, a sort of password or “passpartout” to be given infinite access to the “empire” of a “new eden” where just wealthy persons could afford to own technologies, thus feeling the power of social differences, discriminations, classes discrepancies: how many people, for example, buy a Mac laptop without having any idea about how to use all its potential only because it’s a trendy and “cool” thing?

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).

Humanistic VS Science

First posted: 15 december 2009

“Once upon a time”, classical and scientific studies (that is to say, humanistics and experimental/research theories taught in science-oriented colleges and universities) were a single “entity”, interrelated and feeding one another in a mutual need and support, and they completed one another.
Today I was speaking to some university students involved in a scientific “branch” and I’ve, sadly, learned, instead, that they think as scientific and classical studies being two differents “worlds” without connections.

In my opinion, studying the most significant authors (that could be considered as paradigms and models of wisdom and knowledge) of the past and of our present, I think that writers and scientists, who represent humanistic and scientific fields, are more than “workers” in a specific context and with a particular background, both sharing the same creative view and “artistic” frame of mind that sustain their inclinations to develop their skills, intellectual and professional. So art itself is the invisible common source they take inspiration from: without this little spark of imagination or irrationality/rationality it wouldn’t be possible any progress, discovery, research (generally speaking).
Now, instead, people who study the “the objective, material substance of nature” desperately need to separate (“a priori”) themselves from who is interested in classical studies, usually asserting (as a logical kind of excuse and explanation) their “truth” by referring to conventions and rules (or so called “dogmatic principles”, that couldn’t be subverted or criticized) that other thinkers (the philosophers and humanistics experts being their primary target to “defeat”) are unable to understand or to keep in their behaviours, methods, theories.

To offer a summary of the speech (that i heard from those students i met): “Scientists are the only one to be able to seize the deep hidden meaning of nature, earth, universe, human mind etc. owning the “key” to unlock the mysteries of human knowledge, on the contrary, people who prefer classical studies live in their own world created by themselves, that is not considered to be true or important by science addicted and fanatics (not the skilled, expert, professional scientists)”. Others say: “Your studies are «hollow» meaningless, you’re bound to statements that tomorrow could change and, so, everything you’re perceiving as real will crumble”. So, at the end, the “scientist” students (as they define themselves, clinging to a definition – science experts or researchers – that doesn’t suit them, that will never be their hand in glove or cup of tea, being something they won’t ever reach) accuse humanists to be “anarchicals” and to live their life in a bad way because they ask too many questions without an answer, while the other ones accuse them to be dull.

The most absurd thing I heard was that mathematics cannot be considered a sciences, I mean that, in their opinion, the mother of science today isn’t considered like that because it’s too much involved with philosophy.

Because of this type of mentality we’ll disconnect this two branches of knowledge in suck a strong way to cause an hole: we’ll create “workers” (I mean, brainless operators of automated, mechanical acts, such as robots, rings of an endless chain of programmed actions they have to perform, complete) of science that apply rules without creating or seeking new ones and artists without creativity because they’re too fond of their non-existent existential problems in order to become famous without hard work or efforts (because, let’s confess it, the majority of students of classic studies, in Italy, don’t like studying or they use only their memory without comprehension of the text to get good marks from the teachers).

In the italian society, the classic studies are perceived as unnecessary and they tend to diguise themselves as science. We don’t understand, in this way, how many both “branches” of studies, although looking as opposite poles, are necessary to the human being: otherwise why do novels, videogames, movies (and so on) exist? How could we cope with (trying to stand it) the stress of our society if humanistics subjects and studies were considered to be just pointless hobbies or void occupations (for lazy, “timekiller” persons), failing to understand their therapeutical benefit in restoring our inner mental balance and emotional structure?
Is relaxing (by enjoying humanistics and art) forbidden in our society? Should we give up feeding our brains with the powerful combination and alchemy of humanistics and science tasted together?

Dedicated to the humanistics lovers. In memory. R.I.P

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 unfaithful deontology of teachers

First posted: 26 october 2009

While I was speaking to a friend has risen one old school problem that, thanks to new technologies, now has more intensified: students prefer to copy during class test (assignments) rather than to learn the lesson.

This girl told me that her youngest sister is starting to believe that his mom is bad because she doesn’t help her with the solutions of the tests posted through cellular phone like the mother, teacher herself, of one of her mates does.

I remember when I was young I was astonished because of my friends’ tricks, while completing tests, and when I told my parents this they replied to be smart and tricky and to learn from my mates how to use these tricks. This view point in our parents persists during the years and it’s increasing with the a sense of protection for their children, so they tend to improvises excuses like: “Well, doing this, my son can get good marks with the minimum stress” or “Poor baby, he has got so many things to do: swimming, volleyball, football, that he hasn’t got time to study, we have to help him in some way”, and so on.

Cellular phones (being forbidden during lessons) removed by teachers in classroom are a distant vision considering the fact that each student has got a minimum of four mobiles to be sure that he can use them with full access and with a good network system.

I remember that during my final test (this examination is called “Maturità” here in Italy, due to the fact that a student is supposed to be mature enough to face this exam in the best way), we couldn’t use mobiles and the traditional word of mouth (a sort of suggestions spread from students to students, in a chain) because teachers arranged our positions in a rational way, some boys thought out to put some little notes with maths’ solutions in the bathroom, hung behind the toilet: some problems started to appear when a young professor, smarter than them, made suspicious by the strange coming and going of the male students from the toilets (a sort of walkaround in crossroads), found the “hidden” place. The president of teachers’ commision warned us that he was going to nullify the tests in case that misbehaviour and malicious acts kept happening, he expressed a good telling-off blaming that unacceptable conduct but then all blew up in smoke bubbles.

Then, later on after getting the final high school degree, we choose the proper college (university) to attend at, and we are sure that teachers are more serious and firmer than the previous ones we had during high school. We think that a strict discipline should be kept and taught in order to defend the right moral conduct of students and preserve the right attitude and behaviour during tests, examinations, etc.

Then, suddenly, we get more and more aware that strict discipline and firm moral conduct are chimeras, mere illusions; in fact, during tests, and even oral examinations, many students manage to find a way to be tricky, to complete their works just by using unacceptable hints, tips, suggestions they are not allowed to follow. For example, during an italian literature and language university test (a written one) a mate of mine put some notes in her dictionary, and each of those notes contained some tips and helps about the test itself. She rewrote and copied entire parts of her class books just to be able to copy them without studying and putting efforts to get ready and well skilled for the exam.

So, we’re wondering if teachers pretend they cannot solve that issue, just because they prefer to keep their privileges, defending their positions and roles, as if correcting the mistakes, blaming the unacceptable conduct, punishing the misbehaviour and malicious acts could ruin their working position or spoil their roles. We can think that they fulfill their profession (that is teaching) in the best way they can: maybe they are just lazy, or they are just childish or indifferent when they pretend not to see and notice students that perform illegal or forbidden acts. But then, i think that each job has got its own professional deontology so teaching moral principles, correcting bad actions, requiring fair play and frank and clean acts is part of a teacher role and profession.

I’ve got some doubts about the principles of some teachers at times.

At this point I wonder if graduated persons, work and apply what they learned, thanks to copying (and, therefore, they don’t know), are really competents and well prepared for the exercise of their duties and, most important, I wonder why we still believe that italian school is one of the best in the world (this is what italian people say, but, if they can, they also send their sons to attend at a foreign university abroad) founding that we are the first who destroys the bases from the foundations.

How much time could it take to discover the usual “naughty boy” (that is proud of breaking the rules and obtaining good marks by “scamming”) in the classroom? Should we suppose that, being “naughty scammers” too many, thus we’d better close our eyes and pretend not to notice them?

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.

The dark side of spiritual teachings

First posted: 17 september 2009

After I wrote the previous post, in Italy, the discussion about religion in our tv programs was hot.

Some days after that, in Friuli Venezia Giulia (a region in North-East of Italy) an eighteen years old girl, of Muslism origins, was killed by her own father. So, you can image how the italian journalists (I don’t know how they can be considered reporters because they very often don’t speak well in their own language and they seem to be “employees” paid by the political and institutional systems, so they’re not free to write what they really think) developed news on this event.

The attorney of Pordenone (the city where this has happened), listening to the declarations of family and her friends, that it was a religious issue and problem that caused the happening of this crime, as well as the age difference, in her relationship with a thirty-one Catholic male (hurt by her father trying to save her from father’s fury).

This isn’t the first case, and surely it will not be the last, in which religion played a very important role in pushing a human being to committ murders

In particular, the Muslim religion, currently, is the first to suffer blaming words due to the fact that some of its followers are somtimes fanatics (that alter the spirit of true and pure spiritual faith): stuffed like turkeys with informations shaped by some religious groups with the  purpose to build a society suitable to their conventional and dogmatic conceptions and strict principles, unable to understand that these informations are completely misunderstood and absent in their sacred text, that is the sacred Koran.

The problem that we should understand is that the Muslims people, like Catholics, often don’t know their religion in a  clear way and they are blinded by misleading interpretations.

All this, including also a tendency, typically Italian, of not acceptance of a different culture, foments and nurtures a kind of racism and hysteria, dangerous, inclined to “attacking” anyone because judged a Moslem, and so, a priori, a fundamentalist.

It’s well known how the media and individual persons often happen and tend to judge and consider a particular type of crime against the law just by referring the crime itself to the religious beliefs and also to the national origins of a persons,as if, for example, a muslim should be always tought to be a fanatic or a lunatic persons because he/she respects the principles and spiritual teachings of the islamic sacred texts and traditions. And here in Italy nowadays arabian persons are blamed for being bad muslims, as if every muslim had to be born in Saudi Arabia or something like that and this fact could imply that he/she is inclined to commit crimes just inspired by his/her beliefs and spiritual, religious faith.

If the same act is committed by an Italian, by nature, is examined regardless of religious faith, recognized as a clinically deviance of a sick person, without connecting the nature of the crime to the dictates of the biblical book of Leviticus or another one.