The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Post Number Fifty-Five: The Worst Possible World

2007-02-25T23:48:00.000+01:00

In the 18th century, the French Illuminist Voltaire wrote a philosophical novel titled "Candide", where the view that we live in the "best world possible" is mocked mercilessly.

I am no Voltaire and I don't mean to write a philosophical novel, but let's face it: this is hardly the best world possible from any point of view.

I'll be blunter and more straightforward: I used to like the world much more than I do now. In fact, this is not the world I want to live into. One might say, "It's not like you have much of a chance to stop the world and jump off it right? So get used to it and live by". My simple answer: "No, I can't jump off, but sure as hell I am not going to live by as well". I am going to complain, to point out what makes this world so unpleasant and induce people to think about it. And while I don't trick myself into delusions of changing the world, I will at least take my time to condemn the involution of civilization we are living through.

I am not really concerned with Iran's attempts at enriching Uranium, despite I positively assume that their plan consists in using that Uranium to build up nukes. Why, shouldn't I be terribly afraid that Muslim fanatics are getting armed?
No, I shouldn't.
In case someone in the USA missed this factual point, for each action we perform we provoke a reaction, most of the times a predictable reaction, and sometimes a scarely unpredictable reaction. But a reaction is provoked nonetheless. Indeed.
Why, we are sitting on a planet that is packed with nukes. You can count them in the thousands across the world. The UN "authorised" five nations to arm themselves with nuclear weapons: the US, USSR, UK, France and China. Sure.
And how long did they believe they could prevent others from building them? In the meanwhile, India, Pakistan, Brazil and presumably Israel have built their own nuclear arsenal. Iran and North Korea are next in the line. Welcome aboard, pals!
What did they expect, when they built that first nuke they so irresponsibly used to scare the wits off Russia by blowing off Japanese cities in a futile show of military strength? That the rest of the world would stare in awe of the mighty power of the United States and bow to their whimsical desires of world dominance in fear of their new weapon?
Heck, people are stupid, generally speaking, but their amount of stupidity always manages to surprise me. There's no way other nations can be prevented from building a nuclear arsenal. Once you create a weapon, the weapon gets used. Welcome to the real world friends.

So here we are, facing this "new threat", which by the way is no threat at all. The real threat is the thousands of nukes sitting right under the American and Russian soils, weapons that retain an immense destructive potential thanks to their sheer numbers.
At the basis of this, there is one particular cause: the thwarted plan conceived by conservative Americans to reassert the might of their decaying nation in the new century. Another example of futile attempts.
In case the Republicans in the US, Dick Cheney in particular, failed to notice it, the Americans don't scare anyone anymore, apart from their allies perhaps. They have failed to win in Vietnam and now they have failed to win in Iraq. All their technological warfare is nothing when confronted with the new means of modern war. Unable to counter the Americans with weapons, the weaklings resort to different arms: such as terrorism, for example. Terrorism is what people do when they are frustrated by the inability to oppose military strength to someone that is meddling with their national interests.

This is not going to be an American century, despite the efforts set forth by Cheney and his contorted plans of world domination. New powers are rising everywhere. India, China, and who knows whom else. This is going to be a century of stupid, futile and pointless conflict caused by the immense stupidity of man. More than ever, this world we live into is dominated by greed, a thirst for power, and a general decadence of Western civilization.

We thought that Westerners had learnt from their mistakes, and that the civilization we represent had become somewhat more enlightened, less prone to condemn others and more inclined to diplomacy, understanding and peace.
Totally wrong.
Westerners today are calling for a civilization clash against the Muslims, with tones that sound reminiscent of those of the delirious Christians of the Middle Ages. Just like those ancient delusional, fanatic assassins, we rally again condemning peoples and religions and hatred becomes so common among us that we fail to recognize it.
See, I am not in the least concerned with Muslim fanatics. There are Muslim fanatics, maybe it's a side effect of living in hot countries or being ruled by testosterone-intoxicated males. There also are a majority of Muslim moderates that do not crave the death of every unbeliever on Earth. What concerns me is Western fanatism. In case we didn't notice, it's us who provoked their anger. It doesn't really take Marx and Engels to realize that if someone is bloody rich at the expenses of someone else, that someone else is going to be damn disappointed.

What a nice world we live into, with no sense of humanity left anywhere. We prove to be just beasts, wild beasts tearing at each other with paws and fangs and killing for the sake of killing. We are a species of murderous apes, evolved from murderous apes and condemned to extinction in the long run, which is probably for the best of the planet.
Let's have fun then, let's show off muscles and strength and be oh-so-manly, with all the nukes and the greed and the Dick Cheneys and the darned stupidity of this forsaken land of sorrows. It would only take that insignificant hint of vision to understand that we share the same planet, the same resources and the same rights, that we are a bunch of irrelevant beings that nature can annihilate in a blink, even without our aid. But no, we lack that vision. Our species is magnificently short-sighted. All we are skilled at is tearing at each other, hating each other, stealing food to Africans and Middle Easterners and then complain if they want to nuke us. And maybe nuke them first, so that some other guy elsewhere will think we are a bunch of bastards and will blow himself off in a restaurant somewhere. And so on. Sure, let's blow everything off. Dammit, isn't that what we do best? Blowing off all the good the best of us could create?
Murderous apes, intoxicated with their testosterone and unable to think with anything else but their balls. This is not a world, it is a hell. There's no place for peace, understanding, mercy and beauty. So go on, human species, follow your path to annihilation, blow yourself off and go to hell, together with all your capitalism, your greed, and your immense, sheer, fantastic, unmatched stupidity.

Amen.

Post Number Fifty-Four: Inferno

2006-12-19T15:34:00.000+01:00

Hello, dear readers.

Whether I still have readers to express my thoughts to, or not, at this point, is unknown to me. It appeared that addressing the matter of Sarong Party Girl's blog attracted a relatively vast audience from Singapore to my musings, if we are allowed to call them such. I have missed from this blog of mine for such a long while, though, that I suppose most of my readers have given up hopes to see me back.
For those who are still reading me, a warm hello.

Many things have been said in my blog, and many remain to be said. On the other hand, I would like to leave aside my passion for the British Islands, and more precisely for the culture of the people that inhabits them, as well as my other fixations (which are known already by those who read my previous posts). Indeed, I would like to catch this occasion to report a piece of poetry.
Presumably, the name of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri is renowned world-wide. Dante was for poetry what Shakespeare was for drama. Undoubtedly, Shakespeare trascends his time and his culture, as it can be easily proved by recognizing the universal acceptance of the Bard's writings, even from totally different cultures. Akira Kurosawa's Japanese interpretation of Shakespeare's dramas is a paramount example. If Macbeth can be rewritten as a Japanese medieval drama without losing a jot of its poignancy, then it certainly is safe to state that Shakespeare trascends his culture.

What we can say of Shakespeare (who, obviously, I deem one of the greatest writers ever born), I believe can and should be said of Dante Alighieri as well. Dante (his real name was Durante degli Alighieri, born in Florence in 1265) was a man of the Middle Ages, and his writings (especially the "Commedia" or "Comedy", later christened "Divine Comedy" by the contemporary writer Giovanni Boccaccio) reflect and somewhat summarize the entire culture and knowledge of the late medieval age. Still, when I read Dante (in Italian), I perceive a sense of "whole" that totally and thoroughly trascends Dante's time. While taking full note of the fact that Dante is and couldn't be but a Catholic of the Middle Ages, still his writing and the analysis of merely human passions can't be limited to his age. But most of all, Dante sounds beautiful. Extraordinarily so.

Dante Alighieri basically invented the Italian language. Ever since the fall of the Roman Empire during the fifth century AD, Latin started a decline that was only limited by the Church's choice to use it as its official language (a choice for which we should really thank the Catholics, for once, as the Latin language is a marvel of intricacy and logical beauty that no other modern language seem to achieve, at least not at such levels). New, "vulgar" languages developed from Latin in Italy and elsewhere (one, the "Langue d'Oil", was to become French). A new dialect was fully developed in Florence by the time Dante started to write his Comedy. By accepting the fact that only scholars and the clergy knew Latin at that point, Dante Alighieri chose to write his Comedy in the "vulgar dialect" of Florence. This, to maximise the spread of his opera, which, in Dante's intent, was to become a beacon for the already unruly Italian people. In his adaptation of the dialect to his poetic intent, Dante in fact invented a new language, and he was so succesful at this, that the new idiom was to become the official language of literature and poetry throughout the Italian peninsula for centuries to come. As a matter of fact, Dante had invented the Italian language, although it remained a literaly, written-only language that only people from Florence actually spoke. That remained relatively true until the second half of the twentieth century, when a huge effort by the Italian National Broadcasting Company "RAI" promoted the diffusion of the Italian language in the country. It suffices to say that the language I speak in my country nowadays doesn't differ too much from Dante's "vulgar". Indeed, Dante is perfectly intelligible by any educated Italian. Thinking of Beowulf's English can give an idea of what this means for my language.

Unluckily, much as I'd love to post here an example of Dante's Italian, I suspect that very few of my readers would be able to understand it. But as a hommage to this great man's poetry, I would like to post the first Canto of Dante's Comedy. But before doing so, let me quickly explain what the Comedy is about.

Dante Alighieri tells us a story. It is a fictional story of course, but he tells it as if it were true. He narrates of his finding himself in a dark forest, and pressed by dangerous wild animals he fears for his life, when the Latin poet Vergilius (another great name of world poetry) comes to rescue him. Vergilius tells Dante that he was sent by God himself to accompany the Italian poet on a journey that will lead him through Hell, the Purgatory and Paradise, as that is the only way out of the mysterious forest where Dante got lost at the beginning. So Dante's adventure begins, during which he will meet many famous humans (contemporary and non) and will talk to them, learning more and more about Florence's, Italian and European politics and culture of the Middle Ages. Dante's journey is an epic adventure that should really be counted as one of the best achievements of worldwide poetry.
Enough said, I leave the readers to Dante's words. I post them in English, in the translation by Rev. H.F. Cary, M.A.. If this post serves the purpose of interesting even one new reader to Dante's Comedy, I shall state that I fulfilled my purpose.

Enjoy the reading.

DIVINE COMEDY
by DANTE ALIGHIERI
(c.1300)

INFERNO
Canto I
IN the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and e'en to tell
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.
Yet to discourse of what there good befell,
All else will I relate discover'd there.
How first I enter'd it I scarce can say,
Such sleepy dullness in that instant weigh'd
My senses down, when the true path I left,
But when a mountain's foot I reach'd, where clos'd
The valley, that had pierc'd my heart with dread,
I look'd aloft, and saw his shoulders broad
Already vested with that planet's beam,
Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.
Then was a little respite to the fear,
That in my heart's recesses deep had lain,
All of that night, so pitifully pass'd:
And as a man, with difficult short breath,
Forespent with toiling, 'scap'd from sea to shore,
Turns to the perilous wide waste, and stands
At gaze; e'en so my spirit, that yet fail'd
Struggling with terror, turn'd to view the straits,
That none hath pass'd and liv'd. My weary frame
After short pause recomforted, again
I journey'd on over that lonely steep,
The hinder foot still firmer. Scarce the ascent
Began, when, lo! a panther, nimble, light,
And cover'd with a speckled skin, appear'd,
Nor, when it saw me, vanish'd, rather strove
To check my onward going; that ofttimes
With purpose to retrace my steps I turn'd.
The hour was morning's prime, and on his way
Aloft the sun ascended with those stars,
That with him rose, when Love divine first mov'd
Those its fair works: so that with joyous hope
All things conspir'd to fill me, the gay skin
Of that swift animal, the matin dawn
And the sweet season. Soon that joy was chas'd,
And by new dread succeeded, when in view
A lion came, 'gainst me, as it appear'd,
With his head held aloft and hunger-mad,
That e'en the air was fear-struck. A she-wolf
Was at his heels, who in her leanness seem'd
Full of all wants, and many a land hath made
Disconsolate ere now. She with such fear
O'erwhelmed me, at the sight of her appall'd,
That of the height all hope I lost. As one,
Who with his gain elated, sees the time
When all unwares is gone, he inwardly
Mourns with heart-griping anguish; such was I,
Haunted by that fell beast, never at peace,
Who coming o'er against me, by degrees
Impell'd me where the sun in silence rests.
While to the lower space with backward step
I fell, my ken discern'd the form one of one,
Whose voice seem'd faint through long disuse of speech.
When him in that great desert I espied,
"Have mercy on me!" cried I out aloud,
"Spirit! or living man! what e'er thou be!"
He answer'd: "Now not man, man once I was,
And born of Lombard parents, Mantuana both
By country, when the power of Julius yet
Was scarcely firm. At Rome my life was past
Beneath the mild Augustus, in the time
Of fabled deities and false. A bard
Was I, and made Anchises' upright son
The subject of my song, who came from Troy,
When the flames prey'd on Ilium's haughty towers.
But thou, say wherefore to such perils past
Return'st thou? wherefore not this pleasant mount
Ascendest, cause and source of all delight?"
"And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring,
From which such copious floods of eloquence
Have issued?" I with front abash'd replied.
"Glory and light of all the tuneful train!
May it avail me that I long with zeal
Have sought thy volume, and with love immense
Have conn'd it o'er. My master thou and guide!
Thou he from whom alone I have deriv'd
That style, which for its beauty into fame
Exalts me. See the beast, from whom I fled.
O save me from her, thou illustrious sage!"
"For every vein and pulse throughout my frame
She hath made tremble." He, soon as he saw
That I was weeping, answer'd, "Thou must needs
Another way pursue, if thou wouldst 'scape
From out that savage wilderness. This beast,
At whom thou criest, her way will suffer none
To pass, and no less hindrance makes than death:
So bad and so accursed in her kind,
That never sated is her ravenous will,
Still after food more craving than before.
To many an animal in wedlock vile
She fastens, and shall yet to many more,
Until that greyhound come, who shall destroy
Her with sharp pain. He will not life support
By earth nor its base metals, but by love,
Wisdom, and virtue, and his land shall be
The land 'twixt either Feltro. In his might
Shall safety to Italia's plains arise,
For whose fair realm, Camilla, virgin pure,
Nisus, Euryalus, and Turnus fell.
He with incessant chase through every town
Shall worry, until he to hell at length
Restore her, thence by envy first let loose.
I for thy profit pond'ring now devise,
That thou mayst follow me, and I thy guide
Will lead thee hence through an eternal space,
Where thou shalt hear despairing shrieks, and see
Spirits of old tormented, who invoke
A second death; and those next view, who dwell
Content in fire, for that they hope to come,
Whene'er the time may be, among the blest,
Into whose regions if thou then desire
T' ascend, a spirit worthier then I
Must lead thee, in whose charge, when I depart,
Thou shalt be left: for that Almighty King,
Who reigns above, a rebel to his law,
Adjudges me, and therefore hath decreed,
That to his city none through me should come.
He in all parts hath sway; there rules, there holds
His citadel and throne. O happy those,
Whom there he chooses!" I to him in few:
"Bard! by that God, whom thou didst not adore,
I do beseech thee (that this ill and worse
I may escape) to lead me, where thou saidst,
That I Saint Peter's gate may view, and those
Who as thou tell'st, are in such dismal plight."
Onward he mov'd, I close his steps pursu'd.

Post Number Fifty-Three: A brief note

2006-09-17T00:09:00.000+02:00

How long since I last typed a word here... There might be something worth a thought or two with me typing something again right today. It's midnight, and so in this moment it's Sept. 17th, 2006. For those who mind my records, this is the 32nd anniversary of my birth. But I am not 32 yet. I will turn 32 at 9:00 am local time (8:00 am GMT, 3:00 am EST, 3:oo pm GMT+7 - which is Singapore time).
For those who might still drop by, I have decided to finally post a picture that shows me in Sweden. To be precise, that is me in Stockholm, right in front of the tower of the City Hall, on a pleasantly warm day and below a breath taking blue sky.
A greeting to all those who still read my words, and who knows, I might be back here sooner or later. I have, after all, a lot more to say. But those who know me, also know that I might take a very long time to state what I have to state...
Goodnight, and if you have a chance to, pay a visit to Sweden.

Post Number Fifty-Two: Christmas?

2005-12-20T17:12:00.000+01:00

Of the Season

It is generally assumed that everyone must be good on Christmas. Why on Christmas and not on the other days of the year I wonder... But what does Christmas mean nowadays?
This holiday is celebrated worldwide by many different cultures, most of which have nothing to share (luckily for them) with the Catholic religion. So technically speaking what Christmas really *is*, is a consumist frenzy centered on doubling the profits of producers and sellers. That's why it's celebrated by virtually everyone.
What is Christmas for me?
Christmas is what remains of the ancient Roman celebrations of the Saturnalia, a week-long holiday dedicated to Saturnus, God of the Sky. The Christians, looking for a day to celebrate the birth of their Jesus (and ignoring when he was born), borrowed the Saturnalia from the Romans and reverted it into Christmas. It was already customary before the coming of Christianity, to exchange gifts during the week of Saturnalia. I am willing to celebrate Christmas for this reason: because it is an ancient Roman celebration. It bridges the gap between the uncivilized world of today's Italy, and its greatest moment of history (Rome). So, as far as I am concerned, I am still celebrating the Saturnalia, and to hell with Christmas.

My two cents on the topic. Happy holidays, dear readers.

Post Number Fifty: Chapter 1, part 2

2005-10-22T13:25:00.000+02:00

No need for much of an introduction: those who are reading this presumably read my two previous posts so they should know what this is all about.

Enjoy the second part of Chapter 1.

............

Elena knew that arguing with Manuela would be pointless, as she had no fault for the requests of Mr. Valeri, but thinking that the disgusting individual wanted to see her right away, for an "emergency", when they were right in the middle of the hottest hours of a suffocating summer Sunday, well, Elena really wished she hadn't picked up the phone.
She turned the handle of the door of the room, feeling even hotter for the annoyance, and she was almost leaving when she realised she was only wearing her underwear, and however modest that was, it certainly wasn't the most suitable clothes to exit the room with. Snorting again for the effort it would cost her to wear something, go out under that sun and drag herself to her job place, Elena picked up her jeans and a short top from the chair, and she wore them, after uselessly trying to wipe her sweat with a towel. With a last sigh, she opened the door and reached the corridor. The rented rooms of the other students were shut, probably because, Elena thought, they could afford the luxury to be left alone. She tried not to make any noise while she reached for the living room, where she found Mrs. Corte. The woman, closer to her sixties than she was to her fifties, sat on her old favourite couch, directly in front of the TV, which transmitted some banalities. It had to be something really boring, for Mrs Corte had fallen asleep, obviously helped both by the heat and by the quality of the entertainment. Elena sighed, thinking of how much she wished to be at that woman's place right then. Anyway, she recollected her energies and left the house.
Immediately she was greeted by a puff of intense heat, coming not as much from the sun as it came from the burning pavement under her feet. The impact with the external air was so traumatic that for a moment Elena felt she couldn't breathe and was caught by a sudden vertigo. She pondered over which physical torture she wanted to inflict on Mr Valeri for forcing her out with such heat. Unable to find any she liked, and being too hot to be willing to think, Elena decided to make it brief and reach the music shop taking the most shadowed path possible. Luckily, a small park – little more than a garden – decorated the square she was supposed to cross to reach her destination, and the leaves of the trees would provide the necessary protection from the merciless sunbeams. There wasn't anyone around. In fact, many citizens were on holidays, perhaps at the seaside, and those few that for the most various reasons were forced to stay in the city, certainly didn't choose to go out at three p.m..
"I am the only jerk around at this time…", Elena thought, while she reached the shadow of the trees in the small park. The sun stunned her and she felt she should hide from its blazing rays as soon as possible. Not a gust of wind moved the leaves. The plane trees and the elms stood motionless in the humid air. At each step on the burned and straw-yellow grass, Elena lifted small clouds of dust and dry earth which found their way through her open shoes, annoying her even more. After a few steps, however under the shadow of a tall plane tree, Elena realized she was feeling sick. She stopped, taking one hand to her chest. She couldn't breathe. She touched her face. Suddenly it wasn't sweating anymore. The girl felt her legs giving in and she let herself fall, hitting her knees, luckily not too hard, on the earth of the park, lifting a puff of dust. She brought her hands to her head which felt like on the verge of exploding. All around, she saw the plane trees float, the buildings facing the square moving towards her and away… for a few instants she felt the whole street was the deck of a ship in the middle of a stormy ocean. She tried to shake herself but the heat took her breath away. With an effort she tried to stand up, in vain. All the world tumbled around her, the sun kept hammering on her head. She saw the sky, greyish for smog and humidity, and the fronds of the trees ran through it like the hands of a crazy clock.Elena fall on her side losing her senses. The thud lifted a last cloud of dust which rested slowly around her.

Post Number Forty-Nine: More Fiction

2005-10-15T12:53:00.000+02:00

Most unexpectedly, one reader of my awkward Prologue posted his/her appreciation to my post. I believe that what we do, whatever it is, is meant for others to enjoy. It would be a very poor and limited conception of art, that of one who believes that the creation of an artist is intended for the artist alone. I am not an artist, but if I do something I try to give it to others. There is no point in learning if you don't teach, no point in knowing if you don't share knowledge. What progress would mankind do if the early tamer of fire kept his secrets for himself?

My unfinished novel dissatisfies me, and I plan to start a new one very soon, but if even one person appreciates what I wrote, I feel compelled to post a bit of the rest and see what reaction I get.

This is the first part of chapter 1. I hope you will enjoy it.

.................

CHAPTER 1

It was a hot, humid and exhausting day, or such it was for those that, like Elena, barely put up with summer's heat. In fact, at least in this case, Elena's unease was shared with a great majority of the people of the city, for whom even a drop of rain could be a blessing. Sunbeams instead flooded the room as they had done every day for two weeks, mercilessly, overheating its air, baking the floor and causing a real torment for someone seeking rest among those walls.
Crippled by the heat and stunned by the light, Elena lay on the bed, hot, watching the ceiling. Sleeping, simply wasn't an option, despite her being dozy, because of that vague sluggishness that often catches us after lunch under the summer's incalescence. She would have stayed there, the whole day round, lying on the mattress, covered by a sheet drenched by her incontrollable perspiration, weren't it been for the importune as much as unnerving ring of the phone. Elena considered for a few instants the quite inviting hypothesis of ignoring it. She was too exhausted, too hot, to drag her body off the mattress and force it to make the gargantuan effort to cross the room and reach the desk, where the phone lay. She felt a slight pleasure imagining that whoever was at the other end of the line was punished for the annoyance he caused to her in such an efficient way, one that at the same time cost so little effort on her side. She simply had to stay where she was, watching the ceiling… sooner or later it would have stopped ringing… a ring… another… another one…
"Damn", mumbled Elena, barely audible. She realized she couldn't cope with this. She was too hot even to stand that unbearable ring that rumbled in her head with such insistence. Elena recollected her energies and managed to sit down, although even that simple movement made her blush, and she briefly moved her wet hand across her forehead, verifying that it too was equally drenched. With a snort, the girl rose from the bed and unwillingly dragged herself to the origin of that unbearable ring.
"Coming!" she grunted, as if the phone could hear her. She lifted the receiver and brought it to her ear.
"Ah, thankfully you are there!", answered a feminine voice that Elena recognized immediately.
"Manuela… is it you?", she said, and her voice sounded much more tired and sleepy than that of her interlocutor.
"What's up, are you sick?", she said, worried, perceiving her lack of energies.
"No, it's just this heat… It’s killing me! Come on, tell me what's up, so I can fall back on the bed and forget what you said."
"I am sorry Elena…", she began, and Elena realized by her tone that by the end of the sentence she was going to share the regret, "… fact is that Mr. Valeri needs you today."
Manuela was Elena's best friend, even if in this moment Elena's only thought was that she had forced her off the bed to give her bad news. Mr Valeri, instead, was the oily and stingy owner of a small music store where both Manuela and Elena used to work, at the sole purpose of rounding up the wages they received weekly from their parents and give themselves at least the impression they were slightly more independent than they were as children. It wasn't unusual that youngsters, students, were forced by need more than by choice to ask for their parents' help to survive. On the other hand, however, not everyone liked it, and some had the luck to be able to choose. Elena, who was an adopted child and felt a sense of gratitude towards her parents for letting her in their family, had opted for a job at a music store which was not far from her house, although it would have been more appropriately called a room, since that was what she had chosen to rent; this, to help their parents save money, and because, somehow, it gave her fewer responsibilities. At least, the landlady was a good woman, although sometimes a bit strange, and she lived in a flat that she had shared with a husband and five sons, but which became too large when her children formed their own families and her husband left her for another woman. For this reason, Mistress Corte rented the empty rooms that once had seen her children grow up, to students of the nearby University. She preferred to host girls, because, as she often jokingly put it, "in a house where six men lived there is a desperate need for women to clean up". Mistress Corte asked only for her rented rooms to be kept clean and reasonably neat. In exchange for that, she cooked for all her guests (which, invariably, ended up including some guys) and chatted lively with them all, to the point that some had started calling her "second mum".So pleasant was Mistress Corte, so unpleasant was Mr. Valeri. A person devoted to a single good: his own. He had eyes for his shop only, he had heart for his money alone. Employing personnel regularly to serve customers would cost him obviously more than he meant to spend. But he had the luck to be a few hundred yards away from the University, a place he had no respect for, but that provided him with a significant amount of low-cost employees. Students had little requests, they were satisfied with ludicrous salaries and they could be mistreated at will without fear they would inform trade unions or worse. For one who chose to quit the job, there could be another right away who despaired to gain some money, and anyway, considering the expenses for a youngster who lives far from home, there certainly weren't many that chose not to catch the occasion. Among those, certainly Elena wasn't one, since she had studied at the University for ten months and since five she had worked for Mr Valeri's shop. She studied Anglo-American Literature and this gave her a chance to work and study at the same time, taking her books to her job place and reading them in her spare time between two customers, which happened frequently. She found classical English Literature very attractive, but her passion was for those fantastic novels which told of kings and princesses, knights and fire-breathing dragons, which she had started loving as a child and which she kept on being fond of now that she had grown up. As she often repeated to her schoolmates, "there is something charming with fantasy, something that transcends reality and seems to call for us, and I can't resist that call". Elena thought that a lightning was more poetic than a light bulb and the passions of princesses and knights more exciting than those of her neighbors.

[...]

(to be continued)

Post Number Forty-Eight: Fiction

2005-10-14T18:05:00.000+02:00

Dear friends and readers, I can't believe it's been a month already since I've last updated my blog. I didn't realize how fast time passes by. I have been busy and distracted, and so it happened that nothing was added to this long list of thoughts of mine.
I suppose that I should apologize for the lack of updates. After all, a number of readers were interested in my musings...

Today, for everyone's delight (so to say), I am willing to post the Prologue of a novel I started writing and that most likely I won't continue. Though the original text is in Italian, I made an awkward translation in English for the charming eyes of my Russian mate; yet I wonder if someone else here is interested in reading the beginning of a fantasy novel, so here you are. I hope you will enjoy it. And if you don't, I can understand you. Personally I didn' t like the outcome myself.

I would like to add, this is for all my readers, but for one in particular, a Singaporean Chinese girl called Iris. I don't know her, but I have read a few entries of her blog. She likes fantasy for sure, and she seems often depressed. I usually feel compelled to help people out of depression because I was depressed myself and know how it feels. There is very little I can do for someone I don't know and who lives on the other side of the planet, but if she likes fantasy, then I presume she might enjoy reading the Prologue I am about to post. If a trace of pleasure is stirred up in her mind as well as in any other reader's of mine, then I'll take it my goal is fulfilled.

To everyone, and to Iris the Chinese Singaporean, have fun.

...............

PROLOGUE

The young guy would hardly find the courage to break into the large hall hadn't it been for the incredible urgency of the message he carried with him. His short, curly dark hair stuck to his sweaty forehead, more due to anxiety than for the run to climb the many stairs; the youngster halted when he entered the hall and looked around, anxiously.
The man he looked for, an elder with a flowing white beard, was sitting at the reading table, deep into one of the many books of his richest library. He was giving him his back, and showed no sign of having noticed the young man’s arrival. Drawing from the little courage he possessed, the youngster spoke: "Sir, I beg you to forgive my intrusion, I wouldn't disturb you but I believe this news deserves your… immediate attention, Sir". He conceded himself a pause before concluding the sentence: he knew all too well what the old man thought of haste and "immediacy". Evidently, his opinion hadn't changed, since the elder didn't reply, nor he lifted his head from his reading, to the point that the young guy wondered whether he had spoken too softly.
"Sir…!", he repeated, louder.
Without lifting his eyes, the elder answered with a persuasive voice, one that years appeared not to have affected if not barely. It didn't sound authoritarian, nonetheless it commanded respect in those who heard it.
"I am old, my child, but I am not deaf. Not yet, at least."
Blushing, the youngster was stunned. The elder raised his back but didn't turn around. Again, he spoke.
"Well? What have you come to tell me?"
"Sir, I believe it is better if you read this message yourself. It was delivered a moment ago."
"Then give it to me, child!", said the elder, yet not with disappointment, rather, almost amused by the youngster's embarrassment. He seemed to turn around to watch him on purpose, as if he meant to enjoy the scene of another confused guy in his presence.
"Sure! Here you are!", the youngster quickly answered, and handed him a rolled up scroll, tied by a narrow red stripe.
The elder took the parchment and untied the knot that held it in position, giving the impression of having read many messages without ever being struck by any in particular.
He started reading, mumbling some words, when he suddenly opened his sky-blue eyes wide. The wrinkles on his forehead corrugated in the expression of surprise that pervaded his face.
Expecting this reaction, the youngster wasn't taken aback by it. He had been told the contents of the message some minutes before and had reacted similarly.
"Is it authentic?", asked the elder, apparently he himself confused by the incredible news he had learnt.
"Yes, Sir. The signature is…"
"… Is the one we expected…. Yes… but this means that…"
"… We found her, Sir."
"But this letter says she is…"
"On the other side. I know Sir, I read it too."
"We must induce her to come here."
"Sir…?"
"What is it, child?", asked the elder, raising his eyes towards his interlocutor.
"The Enemy too knows we found her."
The elder stood up suddenly. One who hadn't known him for long would be surprised to see him so full of energies at his obviously not young age.
"How can it be?"
"One of our envoys was a spy, Sir. Our men stopped him but it was too late, he had forwarded his message already."
"Then we are in danger! So many years to reach this point and suddenly we lack time! We must act quickly. If she fell in the hands of the Enemy, it would be the end."
The elder turned around and opened a drawer. He took out a parchment, on which he quickly wrote a message using a goose feather he found on the table. He didn't even sit down to write. He rolled the parchment and turned towards the youngster.
"Here you are, take this. Those are instructions that you must forward to our envoys. Tell the guys downstairs to hurry, we don't have time. We must be quick."
The guy found it incredible, that even considering the circumstances the elder was using the word "hurry". He didn't remember him uttering that word aloud if not together with criticism about the foolishness of youngsters.
"Sir? Please forgive me… what are the plans? How…?". The elder didn't give him the time to complete his sentence: "There only is one way and it doesn't depend upon us, as you perfectly know. You are too young to remember it, but there has been another case when it was necessary to take something to the other side… although in that occasion that was the destination, not the starting point. Anyway, if the guys downstairs will follow my instructions literally, we do have good chances to succeed… otherwise… well, otherwise there won't be any place into which taking someone. "The youngster was caught by a thrill at the perspective he was being suggested, no matter how unlikely. He couldn't but trust the bearded man. Anyway, knowing him, and knowing how wise he was, he had no problems trusting his word.
"I'll be quick, Sir!", he declared, glad for an instant to be able to utter that word without being criticized.
"Good… and may Fate assist us. I only hope it's not too late already."
The youngster rushed to the stairs, while the elder scratched for a moment his bearded chin, thinking. He looked at the large book with leather covers, lying on the table. He didn't have the necessary concentration to keep reading it anymore. He closed it and mumbled: "This is our only hope… It is time to do my part". Therefore, he exited the large hall passing through a richly decorated side door made of white wood, leaving the book he was reading closed, on the table.Most likely for a long time.

Post Number Forty-Seven: Infamy Fell On Italy

2005-09-17T00:49:00.000+02:00

Of Silvio Berlusconi.

Silvio Berlusconi, whom I consider my nemesis, the exact opposite of the kind of person I would esteem, and the ultimate evil to be eradicated if we want Italy to progress into the world of civilized countries, is the Prime Minister of Italy. I will hereby paste an excerpt from Wikipedia's entry about this person Berlusconi.

Silvio Berlusconi:

"[...]

Berlusconi is a controversial figure at times. In one widely reported incident, upon being asked how he would have dealt with his conflict of interests by the German member of the European parliament Martin Schulz (SPD) during Italy's presidency, Berlusconi reacted with the words "Mr. Schulz, I know there is a producer in Italy who is making a film on the Nazi concentration camps. I will suggest you for the role of kapo. You'd be perfect." The reference to the Nazis caused an uproar in the 626-seat assembly and a short diplomatic crisis between Italy and Germany.
On another occasion, he stated that "Mussolini's regime hadn't killed a single person" and that Mussolini "just used to send opposers on holiday" thus apparently denying or dismissing a long series of fascist crimes, from the murder of Giacomo Matteotti to the infamous fascist concentration camps (Rab, Gonars, etc.). Berlusconi later claimed that he did not mean to white-wash Mussolini, that he only reacted to a comparison, which he felt unfair, between the fascist dictator and Saddam Hussein.
One of Berlusconi's strongest critics in the media outside Italy is the British weekly The Economist (nicknamed by Berlusconi "The Ecommunist"). The war of words between Berlusconi and the Economist has been infamous and widely reported, with Berlusconi taking the publication to court in Rome and the Economist publishing open letters against him http://www.hebig.org/blogs/archives/main/001105.php.
In any event, according to The Economist, Berlusconi, in his position as prime minister of Italy, now has effective control of 90% of all national television broadcasting. http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=593654 This figure includes stations he owns directly as well as those he has indirect control of through his position as Prime Minister and his ability to influence the choice of the management bodies of these stations.
Berlusconi's extensive control of the media has been linked to claims that Italy's media shows limited freedom of expression. The Freedom of the Press 2004 Global Survey, an annual study issued by the American organization Freedom House, downgraded Italy's ranking from 'Free' to 'Partly Free' http://www.freedomhouse.org/media/pressrel/042804.htm on the basis of Berlusconi's influence over RAI, a ranking which, in "Western Europe" was shared only with Turkey (2005). Reporters Without Borders states that in 2004, "The conflict of interests involving prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and his vast media empire was still not resolved and continued to threaten news diversity".http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=10148 In April 2004, the International Federation of Journalists joined the criticism, objecting to the passage of a law vetoed by Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in 2003, which critics believe is designed to protect Berlusconi's alleged 90% control of national media. http://www.ifj-europe.org/default.asp?index=2451&Language=EN
Berlusconi's influence over RAI [The National Broadcasting Company of Italy] became evident when in Sofia he expressed his views on the journalists Enzo Biagi, Michele Santoro http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=3284, and comedian Daniele Luttazzi after his satiric behaviour and his interview with journalist Marco Travaglio. The four never appeared in any TV shows since then. Left-winged politicians and media refers to this episode as the Sofia Diktat. The TV broadcasting of a satirical program called RAIOT was censored in November 2003 after the comedian Sabina Guzzanti made outspoken criticism of Berlusconi media empirehttp://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=8587. Mediaset, one of Berlusconi's companies, sued the italian state broadcasting company RAI because of Guzzanti show asking 20 million Euro for "damages" and from novembre 2003 she was forced to appear only in theatres around Italy.
In response to such claims, Mediaset, Berlusconi's television group, has stated that it uses the same criteria as the public (state-owned) television RAI in assigning a proper visibility to all the most important political parties and movements (the so-called 'Par Condicio'). It is also true that while the distribution of newspapers in Italy is lower than most other European countries (100 copies per 1000 individuals compared to 500 per 1000 in Scandinavian countries, for example http://www.nikkei-ad.com/media_data/ad/jpmarket/paperinjp.html), the majority of national press, which includes the three italian largest printed dailies, La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera and La Stampa, tends to report independently of the Berlusconi government or (in the case of La Repubblica, among the three major newspapers cited above) to be very openly critic of it. Yet the resignations of the director of Corriere della Sera, Ferruccio de Bortoli, were seen as a grasp for more media control from the government. In fact the FNSI, the Trade Union for Italian Journalists, organized a three days long strike to show support to the former director of the newspaper.
The conflict of interest issues can be better understood in the context of the structure of control of the state media. The board of directors of RAI is appointed by both presidents of law-makers' chambers (Senate and Deputies). Although the presidents are chosen by the majority group, they are traditionally chosen in order to be acceptable by the opposition too. As of 2005 these positions are occupied by Marcello Pera and Pierferdinando Casini respectively. The Italian parliament established an oversight commission for radio and TV broadcasting services in 1975, including members of all parties. The chairman of this commission is traditionally a representative of the opposition (at the present time a member of DS-Ulivo party) http://www.parlamento.it/leg/14/Bgt/Schede/Commissioni/4-00060.htm)

Legal investigations of Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi undoubtedly has a rather long record of judicial trials, as several crimes have been alleged to him or his firms (see also the following subsection on Berlusconi's trials), including false accounting, tax fraud, corruption and bribery of police officers and judges. Some of Berlusconi's close collaborators, friends and firm managers have been found guilty of related crimes, notably his younger brother, Paolo, who in 2002 accepted to pay 52 million euros as a plea bargain to local authorities for various charges including corruption and undue appropriation17. However, no definitive conviction sentence has ever been issued on Silvio Berlusconi himself for any of the trials which have concluded so far; in some cases he has been fully acquitted of the alleged charges, in others he has been acquitted with dubitative formula (not proven), or he was acquitted because the statute of limitations expired before a definitive sentence could be issued; in one case a previously granted amnesty extinguished the crime (perjury) before the sentence came into effect. The Italian legal system allows the statute of limitations to continue to run during the course of the trial. Consequently, the dilatory tactics adopted by Berlusconi's attorneys (including repeated motions for change of venue) served to nullify the pending charges. Some of the suspects on Berlusconi's person arise from real or perceived blank spots in his past. Notably, in 1981 a scandal arose on the discovery by the police of Licio Gelli's secret freemasonry lodge (Propaganda Due, or P2) aiming to move the Italian political system in an authoritarian direction to oppose communism. A list of names was found of adherents of P2, which included members of the secret services and some prominent personalities from the political, industrial, military and press elite, among which Silvio Berlusconi, who was just starting to gain popularity as the founder and owner of "Canale 5" TV network. The P2 lodge was dissolved by the Italian parliament in december 1981 and a law was passed declaring similar organizations illegal, but no specific crimes were alleged to individual members of P2. Berlusconi later (1989) sued for libel three journalists who had written an article hinting at his involvement in financiary crimes and in this occasion he declared in court that he had joined the P2 lodge "only a very short time before the scandal broke" and "he had not even paid the entry fee". Such statements, however, conflicted with the findings of the parliamentary commission appointed to investigate the lodge's activity, with material evidence, and even with previous testimony of Berlusconi, all of which showing that he had actually been a member of P2 since 1978 and had indeed paid a 100,000 Italian liras entry fee. Because of this he was indicted for perjury, but the crime was extinguished by the 1989 amnesty.
Berlusconi's career as an entrepreneur is also often questioned by his detractors. The allegations made against him generally include suspects about the extremely fast increase of his activity as a constructon entrepreneur in years 1961-63, hinting at the possibility that in those years he received money from unknown and possibly illegal sources. These accusations are regarded by Berlusconi and his supporters as empty slander, trying to undermine Berlusconi's reputation of a self-made man. Frequently cited by opponents are also events dating to the 1980s, including supposed "favor exchanges" between Berlusconi and the former prime minister Bettino Craxi, indicted in 1990-91 for various corruption charges; and even possible connections to the Italian Mafia, the latter accusations arising mostly from the curious circumstance that he employed for two years, as a stableman in his Arcore villa, the wanted mafia boss Vittorio Mangano4. Berlusconi acknowledges a personal friendship only to Craxi, and of course denies any ties to the Mafia, stating that he was absolutely not aware of who Mangano really was when he employed him. Heated debate on this issue was recently (2004) triggered again when a Forza Italia senator and long time friend of Berlusconi, Marcello Dell'Utri, was sentenced to 9 years by the Palermo court on charge of "external association to the Mafia" 5, a sentence on which Berlusconi refused to comment.
On some occasions, which raised a strong upheaval in the Italian political opposition, laws passed by the Berlusconi administration have effectively delayed ongoing trials on him, allowing the statute of limitations to expire, or stopped them entirely. Relevant examples are the law reducing punishment for all cases of false accounting; the new law on international rogatories, which made his Swiss bank records unusable in court against him 6; the law on legitimate suspicion, which allowed defendants to request their cases to be moved to another court if they believe that the local judges are biased against them 7,8; and most importantly the lodo Maccanico law, passed in June 2003, which granted the highest five state officers, including the Prime Minister, immunity from prosecution while in office2. This law froze Berlusconi's position in the SME-Ariosto trial in which he was accused of having corrupted judges in previous legal rulings regarding his partecipation in the public auction of the state-owned food company SME in the 1980s. However, the trial was not frozen for other defendants, and the former lawyer of Berlusconi's main firm (Fininvest) and former Italian defence minister, Cesare Previti, was sentenced to 5 years although the crime was reduced from corruption of judges to simple corruption 9,10. In January 2004 the Lodo Maccanico was nullified by the Constitutional court as it was ruled to be in conflict with the Italian constitution. Subsequently Berlusconi has declared his intent to re-introduce the law using the correct procedure for constitutional modification. Because of these legislative acts, political opposers accuse Berlusconi of passing ad personam laws, to protect himself from legal charges; Berlusconi and his allies, on the other hand, mantain that such laws are consistent with everyone's right to a rapid and just trial, and with the principle of presumption of innocence (garantismo); furthermore, they claim that Berlusconi is subject to a judiciary persecution, a political witch hunt orchestrated by politicized (left-wing) judges 11.
For such reasons, Berlusconi and his government have an ongoing quarrel with the Italian judiciary, which reached its peak in 2003 when Berlusconi commented to a foreign journalist that judges are "mentally disturbed" and "anthropologically different from the rest of the human race", remarks that he later claimed he meant to be directed to specific judges only, and of a humorous nature12. More seriously, the Berlusconi administration has long been planning a judiciary reform intended to limit the arbitrariness allowed to the judges in their decisions (for example by introducing civil liability on the consequences of their sentences), but which, according to its critics, will instead limit the magistrature's independence, by de facto subjecting the judiciary to the executive's control. This reform has met almost unanimous dissent from the Italian judges 13,14 and, after three years of debate and struggle, was passed by the Italian parliament in December 2004, but was immediately vetoed by the Italian President, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi 15, who said some of the passed laws were "clearly unconstitutional". Presently (February 2005) the law is in process of being examinated by the parliament again, taking into account the President's objections of constitutionality.
Berlusconi has also been indicted in Spain for charges of tax fraud and violation of anti-trust laws regarding the private TV network Telecinco, but his status as a member of the European Parliament allowed him to gain immunity from prosecution 16.

Trials
This section provides a summary of each of the many trials involving Silvio Berlusconi as of 2004.
Completed processes
False testimony on Propaganda 2: In 1990 Berlusconi was declared theoretically guilty of perjury by the appeal court of Venice for false testimony on his affiliation to the freemason lodge "Propaganda 2", commonly known as "P2"; however the court did not proceed to a punishment sentence because the crime had been extinguished by the 1989 amnesty.

Bribing a member of the Financial Police (corruption)
First Court: sentenced to jail (2 years and 9 months) for four bribes.Appeal court: the statute of limitations expired for three of the charges, an acquitted was given on the fourth with dubitative formula (similar to Scottish law not proven verdict).

All Iberian 1 (illegally financing a political party)
First Court: sentenced to jail (2 years and 4 months) for paying 21 billion lire (about 10 million Euro) to Bettino Craxi via an offshore bank account codenamed "All Iberian".Appeal Court: the statute of limitations expired before the appeal was completed so Silvio Berlusconi was acquitted.

Medusa Cinema (false accounting)
First Court: sentenced to jail (16 months) for false accounting of 10 billion Lire (about 5 million Euro) in some of Silvio Berlusconi's bank accounts.Appeal Court: acquitted on the charge with dubitative formula (not proven) .

Lodo Mondadori (corrupting a judge)
Appeal Court: statute of limitations expired before the appeal was completed so Silvio Berlusconi was acquitted.

Trials still running (September 2004)

All Iberian 2 (false accounting):
Trial suspended: both the European Court of Justice and the Italian Constitutional Court are examining the new laws on social crimes approved by Berlusconi's Government. If the new laws are accepted, the crime statute of limitations will have expired.

Macherio estates (embezzlement, tax fraud and false accounting)
First Court: acquitted for embezzlement and tax fraud, the statute of limitations expired before a verdict was reached on the two cases of false accounting.Appeal Court: acquitted for embezzlement, tax fraud and the first case of false accounting; statute of limitations expired for the second.

Lentini affair (false accounting / 5 millions Euro paid secretly to Torino football club for buying the player Luigi Lentini)
First court: The statute of limitations expired for the charge.Appeal court: still running.
Fininvest media group consolidated (false accounting / 750 million Euro of illegal (black) funds stored by Fininvest in 64 offshore societies)The statute of limitations expired due to the new laws on false accounting recently approved by Berlusconi's government.

SME-Ariosto (corrupting a judge)
At the beginning, the trial SME-Ariosto involved both Cesare Previti and Silvio Berlusconi. Then, the Italian government approved a new law, the so called "Lodo Maccanico" (also known as "Lodo Schifani"): this law gives immunity to the five highest state officers (premier, president of the Republic, Senate's president, Deputy Chamber's president, Constitutional Court's president). In order to avoid the complete suspension of the trial, the Court of Milan has split it in two parts, one regarding Cesare Previti, and the other regarding Silvio Berlusconi. The Cesare Previti's part of the trial resulted in a guilty verdict, while the other part (regarding Silvio Berlusconi) was closed because of the statute of limitations, and not with a innocence verdict. Actually, the Constitutional Court declared that the "Lodo Maccanico" violates articles n. 3 and 34 of the Italian Constitution (Sentence n. 120, 2004).

SME-Ariosto (false accounting)
Trial suspended: the European Court of Justice is examining the new Italian laws on social crimes (see trial on All Iberian 2 above).

[...]

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2005 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
View this entry at Wikipedia.org - Edit this page at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation

I think everyone can understand why I hate this man.

As for the rest, I still believe that all men are created equal - which is definitely something Berlusconi doesn't believe, much less understand.

Post Number Forty-Six: Ceterum censeo, Carthaginem esse delendam

2005-09-15T18:58:00.000+02:00

Of Equality

In the III-II centuries b.C., the might of Rome conflicted with that of Carthage, a city built on the coast of modern Tunisia, from where it controlled the Mediterranean. Already in control of the Italian Peninsula, the Romans knew that Carthage represented an obstacle to further growth of the economy of the Republic (Rome was a Republic then). Sea routes were of critical importance to boost commerce and Rome simply couldn't let them be controlled by a foreign power. On its own side, Carthage knew that its dominion on the sea was in danger and Rome was to be confronted soon, before it became too mighty an enemy to deal with. This led to the Carthaginian Wars, three series of battles which rank among the most famous campaigns ever fought on this planet. Certainly, one of the most renowned episodes is that of the Carthaginian general Hannibal moving from Spain (back then, a nation under the rule of Carthage) with an army that included elephants, an animal Romans were unfamiliar with. Hannibal was driven in an extenuating series of battles away from Rome by Quintus Fabius Maximus, a Roman General I am proud of having my same name (Maximus is the Latin translation of my Italian name). Anyway, it is known that after the second Carthaginian war was ended, Marcus Porcius Cato the Censor was elected consul of the Republic of Rome, and he had the habit to conclude whatever speech he had on no matter what topic, with the sentence "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam", that means "As for the rest, I believe that Carthage must be destroyed".
His insistence should be now matched by my intention to close every post I submit to this site with the sentence "Ceterum censeo homines equales esse", or "As for the rest, I believe that all men are equal".

All men are EQUAL. I have already stated this sentence in my blog. I have noticed by talking with Viv that some people still find this too hard a concept to understand. Perhaps, some people do not really know what it means, to state that all men are equal.

I am a guy. I have brown hair and brown eyes, a white skin that becomes beautifully tanned very quickly after a short exposition to sunshine. I have studied Physics, I enjoy literature, I can speak two languages and mutter some words in another couple, my IQ was estimated equal to 135, I am sensitive to music and much less to paintings, I love classical music and beautiful women (the definition of beautiful woman is very subjective in this case). I am European and Italian, specifically Northern Italian. I pride myself of being continuously flattered by Miss Vivien Won who I repute one of the most interesting people in the world, and by Tanya Gelfand who is, simply said, a perfect charming friend of mine. I love science and philosophy, am curious and somewhat arrogant especially when it comes to dealing with Catholic lowlife.

This very inaccurate description of me already identifies a series of characteristics of my being me, that set me apart from a lot of people. I am a guy therefore I am not a girl (and sometimes I regret it). I have brown hair, hence I am not blonde. I am Caucasian, so I am not Asian or Black.
And so on.

I adore Tanya Gelfand and Vivien Won, but they are obviously very different from me. And very different between themselves as well, for that matter, if anything, one is an Asian beauty with a devastatingly inquisitive mind and the other is a Russian-Jew concentration of pure charm and artistic talent. I am not an Asian beauty and I am not slightly talented for visual arts.

If I were so picky as to care about this, my left hand is different from my right hand. They can both type relatively quickly on the keyboard but one can write, the other can't. My eyes are not remotely similar, one is very larger than the other and my sight is therefore impaired: unless I intentionally focus my sight, everything in my world appears blurred just as things do in impressionist paintings by Renoir.
And so on.

It is therefore very evident on the surface, that I am quite different from other people, and in fact I am quite unique. I am a strong supporter of the uniqueness of human beings. There can only be one Vivien Won, and even if we cloned Vivien the new Vivien would not be the same person, for the new girl's life experiences would be totally different and therefore would lead her to a different personality behavior. When I was a child the world was totally different. I was born in 1974 and there were no home computers, cell phones or globalization back then. If I were cloned here and now, my clone would grow up in a totally different world and would certainly develop a different character according to his surroundings.

Each of us is unique, but still I reckon that all human beings are equal. How can it be so? How can I plainly state that human beings are equal if I just stated that human beings are unique and unreplaceable?

I state that because being equal does not mean being, in fact, IDENTICAL. I am not the same as Viv or Tanya.

Stating, like i do, that I am equal with Tanya and Viv, means that, while I recognize the obvious differences among the three of us, I believe that from a certain point of view, that is as far as our nature of human beings is involved, such differences are irrelevant.
In fact, while Tanya and Viv are obviously more attractive than me, no one can deny the fact that the three of us are, actually, human beings. Were I so insane to punch Viv to unconsciousness, I am quite positive she wouldn't be happy about it, as in fact no other human being would. I can in fact assure you that I wouldn't be happy to be punched to uncounsciousness by Viv as well... As human beings, we have similar feelings that induce us to cry or rejoice. When a person says "I am sad", we all know what that means because we all know what it means to be sad, and we know that because we experience that all the time. A human being has a brain (although most human beings do not use it). This brain, in case it is put to use, is able to produce rational thinking. Rationality is a characteristic of all human beings (put aside whether it is actually used or not). Humans share the same destiny on this planet. If the planet was wiped out, all humans would die. In fact, anyway, all humans die, and all humans are born from a mother - or at least from an egg cell.

Those among humans that believe we are equal, actually do not believe that we are identical. What we believe is that the differences among us are not as important as the things that unite us. It's all there. I dare a further step. The differences among living beings are irrelevant. All of us are alive, therefore similar.

We therefore believe that the fact that we are all humans, implies we have certain rights.

Regardless of how sexy or smart or rich or hard-working or whatever you think other people, or yourself, are, because you are a human being, you have rights.

This is it.

STATING THAT HUMAN BEINGS ARE ALL EQUAL MEANS THAT REGARDLESS OF THE DIFFERENCES AMONG THEM, ALL HUMAN BEINGS HAVE EXACTLY THE SAME RIGHTS.

Which rights?

1. the right to be alive. I have the right to live. Note: I do not have the duty of living. I have the right to live, which implies, in my opinion, that I also have the right to choose when I want to stop living. Note number two: I claim, state, and fiercely assert that embryos are not human beings and therefore their supposed right to live comes second to the right to be happy of their mother.
because, in fact, right number two is
2. the right to pursuit happiness. To each his own. We are all different so we are happy in different ways, but each of us, for being human, has the right to pursuit his/her chosen path to happiness. VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: Your chosen path to happiness cannot clash with the paths of someone else. You do what you like with your life, but do not tell anyone else what to do with theirs, and most of all, do not prevent others from pursuiting happiness through your careless behavior
3. the right to a job. Surprise. Job is a right.
4. the right to a house. Surprise #2: housing is a right.
5. the right to feed and drink (this is actually an extension of right 1.)
6. the right to health (this is again an extension of right 1.)

These things are inherent rights of human beings. I was born humans therefore I have all those rights.

What we do in Europe (what we used to do and only some countries still do, specifically the wealthiest and most competitive economies in the world - Scandinavia) is to set rules that guarantee these rights.
We believe that since all humans are equal, the community of humans counts more than the single individual, in the sense that what one does, he doesn't do it for himself alone but for the community. So it is simply right that if I work hard, I do it for the good of the human community and not just for myself. So a part of what I gained I give it to the rest of the people, because only an imbecile would think that if one is poor, that is his fault.
We do not prevent people from being rich, but we do our best to redistribute wealth among all the people, through taxes, so that no one is too richer than someone else. Because everyone has the right to own a house, to be treated if ill and to be fed if hungry.
What happens if a country does not do that?

In the USA, they really believe that if you are poor it's your fault. They do not redistribute wealth through taxes, they despise the poor and praise the wealthy.

The poor have aren't guilty of their condition of course, but Americans are driven imbecile by Republican propaganda. Therefore, when a city is flooded like New Orleans these days, instead of working side by side, feeling a part of the society (which is what Europeans did in Central Europe during the floods of this summer), they shoot each other and try to steal each other's wealth. This is what to expect from a people that does not recognize the rights of human beings. This is also the beginning of the decline of the USA, which is something they looked for, and I hope it will teach them a lesson.

Now all of us, let's think of our country. Are human rights protected? Are humans treated as equal, regardless of their differences? Are omosexuals tolerated and treated equally? can they marry? are girls treated equally like guys? Does the Government make the rich bastards pay taxes so national wealth is redistributed to the good people that did not sell their soul to the devil to become rich bastards? Are the poor treated with condescence and helped regardless of their race?
Italy is light years behind in this sense. We are a bunch of racist imbeciles with so little understanding of human rights that even the Americans fare better than us. And Americans have basically no knowledge of human rights, apart from what they wrote in the Declaration of Independence (all of which their Republican rulers were very quick to forget).
Finland is much closer to this "ideal" of equality. Finland has the most competitive economy in the world, and Italy doesn't even appear in the list of competitive economies.

Being equal means that we have the same rights.

And as for the rest, I believe that all men are created equal.

Post Number Forty-Five: Thoughts of a Breakfast with Viv

2005-08-27T15:22:00.000+02:00

Of the European path to Civilization

First and foremost:
Dear friends and readers of my blog, as you will notice, I have added the "word recognition" feature to add comments to my posts. This was necessary to prevent comment spamming. I would like to state clearly, that comments to my posts are most welcome and accepted as long as they are not used to promote or advertise services and products of any sort. I will not tolerate advertising of any kind and such comments will be removed as soon as I detect them. Some companies use advertising software to automatically add comments to posts. Simply said, I won't tolerate any form of advertising, automatical or intentional.

.............

During my stay in Sweden, I had at least two particularly intense and thoughtful conversation with that charming girl Viv, whose volcanic mind never fails to impress me. One of them, though, found me in total disagreement with her, and I believe, such disagreement was most likely due to a cultural gap that I have always ignored (and keep ignoring) between the Europeans and the Americans.
What have Americans got to do with a Chinese girl from Singapore? Apparently nothing, but when one thinks about it, it can't go unnoticed that the economical model of development of Singapore, as well as that of other like-minded Eastern nations like Hong-Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, borrows a lot from that of the United States of America. Especially in terms of "freedom of market", scarce-to-non-existent interference of the State in business, low standards of public welfare, promotion of self-entrepreneurship, pursuit of wealth as the main goal of the laymen and such.
Therefore, the American model, which is quite based on these standards, is definitely important in shaping and leading the economies of most Eastern nations, including Singapore's.
The European approach to economy is quite different of course. In the European model, the State intervenes relatively heavily on business through the taxation of financial transactions, by owning critical services (public transport, resources, highways, TV networks...) and by providing significant public services to the population, paid for by taxes. It is known as "Welfare model", and it is typical of the Central and Northern European Democracies, usually led by Social Democratic Parties. Just in case, I am a Social Democrat at heart.
According to Viv, such a system would not work in Singapore, basically because the population is very diverse. There is no way the hard-working Chinese would accept to be stripped of their earned wealth by taxes that would be then used to provide assistance and services to the lazy members of some other ethnic group. In a very diverse society, where people know they are different from each other, any public welfare system is doomed to failure. Besides, it would impoverish the economy, and Singapore is surrounded by hostile nations, protected by its wealthy economy alone.
I presume I have reported Viv's opinion precisely enough. If I made any mistake, and you are reading here Viv, you are welcome to correct me.
First of all, I would like to point out that the fact that a welfare system such as that of Europe is not, as the Americans like to advertise on books written by their experts, going to impoverish the economy. This is simply explained by carrying one example.
The nation of Finland has the wealthiest economy in the world. According to international surveys, they vastly beat the United States in terms of technological advancement and they even surpass mainland China in educational level. Their reliability in business is usually the highest in the world. Nonetheless, they also run their State according to a strictly Social Democratic, European Welfare model, which doesn't make their economy any poorer or less competitive than that of other, aggressively capitalist countries. In fact, they are faring better in terms of economy than those countries.
You might want to check the following link:
http://www.imtec.net/istma/eng/cfmldocs/index.cfm?ID=1297
Here you will find a listing of the most competitive economies of the world. You will notice that Finland is number 1 in the world, and among the first 4, 3 (Finland, Sweden and Denmark) are actually Socialist European countries, where taxes are high and the welfare intense. In fact, Singapore ranks 6th. This means that the three countries with the highest level of welfare in the world (Finland, Sweden and Denmark) actually possess a more competitive economy than Singapore. Therefore, if Singapore were to choose a Social Democrat model of development, chances are high that the nation would be wealthier and probably even better protected by its hostile neighbors. It might be interesting to note that among those leading 15 economies in the world, Northern and Central European countries with a Socialist approach to economy appear 8 times, and New Zealand, which is also modeled on the Northern European economy, is ranked 14th.
The secret of course lies in not in how free the market is but on how much the country focuses on high education, high tech, and most especially on how efficiently wealth is redistributed among the people, so as not to produce large sectors of population that are basically unproductive for excessive poverty or lack of education.
Finland has the best economy in the world (better than the American) and an extensive public welfare system. This is the last word on the books written by self-appointed experts from the USA that are just afraid they might have to pay more taxes, or even worse, that their taxes could be used for the welfare of the population instead of supporting the industries they own.

This much said it is also true that the European Economy is in general quite sluggish, especially in Southern Europe and Germany. This is usually explained by an alleged malfunctioning of the welfare system.
This is quite not the case.
Ever since Berlusconi set his dictatorship's agenda with the main goal of dismantling's Italian Welfare system, the Italian economy has gone worse and worse each year. The misconception that less taxes imply an economic boom is, in fact, just that: a misconception. The economy can grow a little bit faster with less taxes for a short while, maybe 10-20 years. Then it just becomes sluggish and the nation usually faces the consequences of not caring for its population: in America, the child death rate has increased significantly in the last 50 years, and there are large sections of the population (especially immigrants) who do not have a job, are seriously lacking an education and therefore do not participate to the wealth of the economy. This is America's greatest mistake. Today, America is alive only thanks to the foreigner Engineers that work there, but as soon as other countries will provide better education, America will face the consequences of its shortsighted economy. In 50 years from now, unless America changes dramatically, I expect it to become much poorer and to lose, perhaps indefinitely, its lead in technological innovation in the world.
This I believe is evidence enough to disprove any misconception about the purported efficiency of de-regulated markets as opposed to systems where taxes are used to redistribute wealth.

Now, to the most important part of the conversation I have with Viv. She was saying that Europe needs reformations in the market (I presume, she intended in the sense of free-market reforms American style). I was answering that in Europe there are very powerful leftist parties that would not allow that. She replied that Europe will have to face the consequences of this because the globalization cannot be stopped and such.
I will leave the whole discussion aside for a second because it dawned on me later that morning that probably Viv believes that reforms are prevented by the existence in Europe of leftist parties. And moreover, she might believe that the European model of social welfare was somehow granted from the above by some benevolent socialist government in total disregard of the efficiency of the economy. I have no idea whether in Eastern Asian emerging economies it is usually taken from granted that the model of development is chosen by the government or not, or whether the people over there usually accept the system they live in or not. Judging from her words, it might seem so, but I have no way to know for real. What I know is that this is not the case in Europe.
I am becoming more and more convinced that the Western Civilization is in itself a misconception. There is no Western Civilization. There is a European Civilization and an American Civilization, and to my great discomfort, not all the Western countries are equally philosophically advanced, which makes some of them much more shortsighted than others. Italy is among the most shortsighted by the way.
The European economy started off in the 1950s, after recovering from the world war, following the same principles of the American free market economy. The government were not benevolent. The people had little or no welfare, taxes were relatively low, and there was a huge difference of wealth between the poor and rich. There was no benevolent leftist party granting anything to anyone.
I don't know if this has to do with the fact that we are the cradle of civilization or if Europeans are just made this way. After all, 2500 years ago in Rome the plebeians, which were the common people in the Republic of Rome, revolted against the rich aristocrats and obtained their representatives in the Senate. Perhaps ever since we Europeans have it hardwired in our brains that human beings are all equal, no matter how much some would like to believe otherwise. Whether some people want to buy it or not, human beings are all equal, especially in their reactions to stimuli. It is not a philosophical abstraction, it is a mere fact. They are so similar that every place where some people have been intolerably made to suffer, the weaks revolted. Every time, every where. The Jews revolted against the Egyptians 3500 years ago. The Cubans revolted against the pro-American rich bastards in the 50's. The Chinese revolted against the colonialists in Peking (the revolt of the Boxers) at the beginning of the 20th century.
And the Europeans revolted against the free market economy in the 60's and 70's of the 20th century. Just to make it clear: we are one step beyond capitalism, not behind. There are people, even in Italy that fought and died to obtain pensions, retirements, public health care and general welfare. And the governments were far from benevolent. In the late 50's the infamous Italian Minister of Internal Affairs Mario Scelba, prided himself of ordering the police to open fire on demonstrants. We have made the European economy EVOLVE from the savage, barbarian, primitive capitalism of the USA, into the modern, state-of-the-art welfare system that makes Finland the leading economy in the world while the USA slide down the list day by day.
The leftist parties now found in Europe are there because the people put them there, they are not some bunch of old-school Marxist philosophers that live in la-la-land and do not understand the requirements of globalization. They are the expression of the European people in its struggle to evolve into something more than mere market. Who said that Europe cannot cope with globalization? Not only we can, we are going to change the path of globalization. Thanks to the well-established liberal culture of Europe, the continent is putting more and more pressure on a regulated globalization that favors the development and wealth of third world countries, possibly in contrast with the American approach that is based on the belief that the world is George Bush's playground. There is no way the people of Europe can let their governments return to the old barbarian capitalism. We haven't died for nothing. What is going to happen, instead, and must happen, is that on the long run the so called free-market economies, after their initial skyrocketing increase in GNP, will create such an intense social tension that strikes and revolts will be unavoidable, and their countries will have to concede more and more to the population. Believe it or not, human beings are equal and they always revolt after the social tension reaches a maximum level. Regardless of their culture. It is somewhat possible that in Singapore it won't be the Chinese to revolt. Perhaps the Malay or the Indians, depending on who's the poorest.
The secret to wealth and prosperity is education and lack of social tension. This means lots, lots and more lots of science and technology. Mathematics. Physics. Biotechnologies. Informatics. At all levels. That's the first step. The second step is to prevent the concentration of wealth in the hands of few people. This means taxes whose revenues are used to increase the welfare of the people. It shouldn't be too hard to realize that a society whose people is not stressed, where the public health is granted to everyone regardless of their wealth and life is mostly secure, where everyone has a state-of-the-art level of education, there are no unproductive citizens left behind. That's the secret of Finland, and that's the secret of Europe too.
I am beginning to wonder if Europe has some sort of "destiny" to always be one step ahead of the United States after being left behind when they made their nation. Incidentally, the initial boom of the American economy was due to the immense amount of money invested by their government in public education during the 1800's. Nowadays, America's level of education is appalling to say the least, science is diserted and many confound the bible with reality. That's why they are slowly losing their lead in technological development.

One word about China.
China grows at 9% per year. It's a lot. Some might think that this is a proof their model of development (without even the slightest trace of welfare, despite they claim themselves to be "Communists") actually works.
It works now. It is doomed to fail as soon as the population starts growing older unless pensions and other public care reforms are introduced. Finland's economy was not exactly state of the art in the 50's. They were a backwarded nation of fishermen lost among the swamps of the Eastern Baltic. They invested in education, science and technology. They implemented a capillary structure of welfare. They did not grow at 9% per year and it took them 50 years to climb the ladder, but in the long run they became the most competitive economy of this planet. A recent survey shows that even now Finnish students fare better in science and maths than the Chinese (who are second in the world). Americans rank among the worst. Italians fare worse than the Americans. Italian economy is stagnant (in recession actually). Finnish economy is steadily at the top. We are dismantling our welfare, they are not. This should tell something.

One final thing.

I can't be proud of being Italian thanks to Berlusconi and its dictatorship. There is little to proud of in Italy. I think Italy has a lot to learn from other countries and I am appalled by the stubborn attitude of our leftist philosophers that think that Italy has such a strong Socialist tradition that everyone else should learn from us. Look, we don't have any strong Socialist tradition and there is nothing particularly leftist in the Italian culture. Our former Communist party leaders, although respectful enough, aren't nearly comparable to the personalities of British Labour Party or the Swedish Socialdemokraterna. We have to learn from others just like everyone else.
But I can and am proud of being European. I understand that we Europeans have perhaps fought more and more often for our rights and for equality than some others. I do not mean, by this, that we are better, because I insist that we are equal. I like to think of myself as a European Citizen of the World. I love the Japanese and the New Zealanders, the post-apartheid South Africans and the Brazilians, but I am also proud of all the cultural background that I have been given by my European ancestors.

Perhaps it is time for Europe to open its doors again and export its welfare culture, instead of passively watch the Americans invade other countries and impose their model of so-called Democracy to them.

Post Number Fort-Four: Jag älskar dig!

2005-08-24T19:01:00.000+02:00

Of my three Swedish weeks, and of my return to Italy.

Dear readers, and friends of mine, I have come back from Sweden, and here I am, typing a new post on my long-deserted blog.
How could I possibly summarize my trip to Sweden in a few lines (especially considering how blatantly long my typical entries are, particularly so when I mean to write short notes)?

First of all, this is hardly the first time I go to spend my holidays in Sweden. In fact, the first time I went to Sweden was in 1998, when, after staying with a friend I loved a lot in Oslo, Norway (unluckily I lost all contacts with that girl, Trine), I took another 8 days trip to "nearby" (6 hours by train) Gothenburg, to visit my other friend Helen. Things didn't work out too well with Helen, we probably ended up in bad terms back then because her husband wasn't too happy about having me around, so I was asked to leave her house and found myself on my own on Swedish soil. Back then, I had no idea what kind of marvel Sweden could be, but since I loved Gothenburg so much, heck, I said, next year I am off to Stockholm, let's see the Swedish capital.
In 1999 I went to Stockholm for the fist time and that was it. I discovered dreamland. You know, that Somewhere Over the Rainbow the song talks about? Only there's no Wizard of Oz there, just me feeling like Dorothy when she tells her dog "I think we are not in Kansas anymore". Also, feeling a bit like her dog too.
The first time I went to Stockholm in 1999 I took 360 pictures of the city. Those were the years when digital camera era had not dawned yet on Italy and so yours truly spent a fantastic amount of his parent's money to develop the 360 snapshot of Stockholm, especially because it was obscenely expensive to develop pictures in Italy in 1999 (now it's much more so). In fact it cost me more than what I paid for the roundtrip with the plane.
The next year, 2000, I took my mother and my sister Flora and dragged them to Stockholm. My sister uttered the now famous sentence: "I like this place. I'll have a house here".
Famous, because later, in 2003, I went to Stockholm and my sister was indeed staying in a house for rent there. I went to Stockholm in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and now 2005. And you can bet I will be in Stockholm on the first week of August 2006, 2007, 2008 and so on. Unless I finally move there once and for all, which is something I should have taken more seriously before I got a good and reasonably well paid job in Italy.
Stockholm is almost a second home to me. When I go there, I don't need a map of course. I know how to use the public transport, I know where the nicest areas are, where are the museums, the ferry boats, the bus stations, the subway stations and so on. Sergels Torg, Riddarholmen, Odenplan, Drottningatan and Stortorget i Gamla Stan are as familiar to me as my neighborhood in the suburbs of Milan, Italy. I actually can walk around Stockholm easier and more comfortably than I could in Milan (which is a hardly walkable city at all anyway).
How can I describe Stockholm?
It is beyond imagination. Especially for my most numerous Singaporean readers. I somehow convinced the lovely and cute Singaporean girl Vivien to pay me a visit in Stockholm this summer. She came over and spent only one Sunday in the capital of Sweden. Perhaps I should quote her very observant boyfriend Stephen, who noticed in less than thirty minutes that:
1. There is no traffic in Stockholm city. I mean, there are very few cars around at any given time of the day and night. The majority of people, regardless of weather conditions, take public means of transport (which include trains, subways, buses and ferries) or, preferably, reach their destination by bike, walking, roller-skating or even riding a horse. To accomplish this, they are greatly helped by the capillary network of bike lanes that run throughout the city and beyond, effectively connecting the whole nation and neighboring country in a vast bike-lane heaven.
2. The rythm of life is extremely relaxed. The people look contented, relaxed, satisfied. They mind their own business, they don't stare at you (Italians stare at people continously, making comments on how they are dressed, and more so if they are Asian), and regardless of their opinion on this topic, they don't know what stress is about.
3. You can stay at the table in a restaurant for two hours chatting with friends. It's absolutely normal, and it would be considered outrageously rude to rush things, serving your food too early or inducing you to believe you are expected to leave some time during the day. For me, this equals to heaven. For my Singaporean friends, I suspect they just needed more time to get used to that. I have heard with much astonishment and a bit of incredulity that Stephen eats in 5 minutes in Singapore. I would not drink a cup of tea in 5 minutes, and I can't imagine how one can possibly eat a whole lunch in 5 minutes. I have long archived memories of that kind of stressful life in Milan when I hadn't been to Sweden yet. Now I am completely Sweden-ized and perfectly able to relax and enjoy the company at the restaurant sitting there for two hours.
4. All in all, Stockholm, in Stephen's words "looks more like an amusement park than a city". That's because in one day we took subway, buses and ferry boats, including a trip in the woods. It is to be known that the Swedes love to live outdoors and they reject as an obscene abominion the idea that a city should be an agglomerate of buildings with occasional geometrically designed small parks. In fact Stockholm is the only city on this planet that hosts a national park within its very borders. It takes but a glance from the city hall's courtyard to realize that Stockholm is a huge park with some buildings appearing here and there.
5. And for this I need not to quote anyone else but me: the Swedish girls are by far the fairest women of the world. I am famous in Italy for caring so little about local girls that I don't even bother looking for a girlfriend. On the other hand, I am not ashamed to admit that I proved my cute friend Viv that I effectively turn into a drooling creature leaving a trail of drool behind me like a snail as soon as I reach Sweden.
This takes me straight ahead to the most beautiful girl of Sweden, which is a girl called Petra, a girl my friend Viv had to hear about enough to give her a year-long headache. If you are reading here Viv, look, I am sorry for that, I just couldn't help it. Petra works in a restaurant in Drottningatan, in the center of Stockholm. I took Viv there because I wanted to introduce her to Petra, which I consider my first Stockholm friend ever. That night I decided to leave my email account to her, so that we can keep in touch during the winter. I truly hope she will write to me. Her smile shines brighter than a sun beam at dawn, and I would lie if I denied that I wouldn't feel my trip to Stockholm complete if I didn't at least pass by Petra's to say hi to her.
Viv was most unlucky with the weather. It looked like Autumn in Sweden when she was there. Not to mention that as soon as she left... well, it was summer again, and I am sorry Viv, I actually got an amazing sun tan over there... quite disturbing, if you are reading here, you should take another trip to Stockholm.
After 9 days in Stockholm, one of which with Viv and Stephen, we moved on to Malmö. That's a lovely city in the south of Sweden. I have another friend there, miss Jeanette Johansson. Apart from being the receptionist of the hotel I stay at each time I go to Malmö, she is also an absolutely lovely girl. She was so nice on Friday, to spend the whole afternoon with us, took us to a nice bar in Lilla Torg, and even joined my mum and me in the trip to the Western Harbour to watch the sunset over Copenhagen. She took a photo of me when I was staring at the pastel light of the sky, my mind lost in charming thoughts of Sweden and my heart bleeding at the thought of coming back to Italy the incoming Monday. Then she showed me the picture and claimed I was most certainly thinking of Petra. Because I spoke a lot about Petra with Jeanette too, poor girl. I wonder how Jeanette could tolerate my litanies.
In fact I wasn't really thinking of Petra in that moment, I was just thinking I was going to miss Sweden a lot.
It felt worse than usual to come back to Italy, a country I have come to dislike more and more thanks to Berlusconi, the Fascists and the Catholic propaganda. Sweden is heaven to me. That's why I will go back there next year.
Unluckily I have to cut this short for my dinner is ready, but stay tuned for my incoming entries soon enough!
A big warm hug to all those who still care to read me!

Post Number Forty-Three: Du gamla, du fria

2005-07-29T22:42:00.000+02:00

I haven't written much in the past two weeks. There was much I wanted to write about, yet it's been so hot in Milan and I have been so tired, that even turning my PC on was unthinkable for it heats the room.

Anyway, there's another reason for which I am going to write nothing for another three weeks and therefore (perhaps) disappoint a couple readers of mine, if I still have any.

In fact, I am leaving tomorrow: I am going to Stockholm, leaving this cursed summer behind with its heat and its humidity and moving to Sweden for three weeks, three long blessed weeks where I will be in the company of trees, lakes, and fresh air.

So I bid my readers goodbye for the moment, and wish everyone a pleasant summer. I'll be back with my annoying blog in September. Till then, enjoy your time and remember: selfishness is not living the way you want to live, it is asking others to live the way you want to live (Oscar Wilde).

Post Number Forty-Two: Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

2005-07-18T19:59:00.000+02:00

Of Fantasy and Fairy Tales

"Suddenly the King cried to Snowmane and the horse sprang away. Behind him his banner blew in the wind, white horse upon a field of green, but he outpaced it. After him thundered the knights of his house, but he was ever before them."
(The Return of the King, ch. V)

Whether you are one of the half a billion readers of the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, or one of the (presumably) as many viewers of the movie by Peter Jackson, I think few will fail to recognize this excerpt. Both in the movie and in the book, this is one of the most emotionally powerful and breathtaking scenes of the Return of the King, the third book which completes the saga of the Lord of the Rings. As the Orcs of Mordor, gathered in the hundred thousand on the fields of Pelennor to siege the human bastion of Minas Tirith, seem close to triumph, swarming in the streets of the white city, there rings a horn in the distance. And hence appear the ten thousand knights of Rohan, the legendary Rohirrim, rallied by King Théoden to bring much needed help to the lands of Gondor. "Death", they cry, loud and terrible, and like a tide they sweep across the battlefield, overwhelming the Orcs.
Personally, both viewing the movie and reading the book, I felt this scene as a magnificient moment of relief. When everything seemed lost, when catastrophe was obviously upon Minas Tirith, hence upon Good, upon the free men of Gondor, there comes the Rohirrim, and they ride to victory, for the world's ending. I could write a novel on the feeling but certain things are better felt than described. If you are as sensible to the Lord of the Rings as I am, you know what I am talking about without my need to speak further.

According to J.R.R. Tolkien's definition of a Fairy Tale, moments like the arrival of the Rohirrim in the fields of Pelennor are essential to the very fabric of a Fairy Tale. The ultimate purpose of such a story, in fact, is to lead the reader through an apparently hopeless drama, and then, when everything seems utterly lost, when all hopes are almost forgone, only then there comes a sudden change of events, that gives the reader that sense of relief which is exactly what the Fairy Tale is meant to provide, and which is what the reader ultimately seeks.
Fairy Tales are not stories for children, as many tend to assume since the nineteenth century. But this requires a little historical/philosophical explanation.

During the European Middle Ages, the greatest bards (because stories were sung by bards more likely than written down by authors) told tales of elves and goblins, knights and damsels, Kings and (especially) Dragons. Stories like this hold little ground in the everyday experience of the Medieval laymen. Nonetheless, such stories are anything but limited to the Middle Ages, or to Europe. The Greeks told fantastic stories of Gods (usually called Mythology, but ultimately, not very much unlike Fairy Tales, from which Mythology differs because it lacks the "happy ending"). The Chinese of all ages record stories of Dragons, damsels that pretend to be guys and fight in the Army (Walt Disney's Mulan is but one of the many), and if we move on to Africa, Oceania and South America, everywhere in the world human beings invent stories that hold no resemblance with their everyday's experience. It appears therefore, that telling stories is not a cultural mishap of Europe, but rather a human need. Or at least, a human instinct.
In fact, it never fails to strike me that a story like the Lord of the Rings, which is obviously very European (very English, to be precise) is nonetheless universally appreciated and read by the Japanese and the Moroccan, the Scandinavian and the South African, the Australian and the American, the Argentinian and the Russian.
When the Enlightment came, together with its values and its Reason, Fairy Tales fell its prey. For stories of Dragons and Trolls were considered close to Unreasonable superstition, and therefore deemed unsuitable for the mature reader. Hence, the Tales ended up in the realm of Children's Books, where they never belonged. In the 1800's, philosophers changed their mind quite radically. They decided that telling fantastic stories wasn't that wrong. Actually they enjoyed superstition, they felt a return of esteem for the Middle Ages. But it wasn't until the Twentieth Century that at least a part of the authors decided Fairy Tales could be for mature readers, after all. Which is what they had always been, though.
In the Middle Ages, the adventures of King Arthur, Roland and Orlando were not intended for children. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was all but a story for children.

Tolkien is among the first authors in the 20th Century to recognize the value of Fairy Tale, and in the intent of giving England its Mythology (because he didn't deem King Arthur a truly English legend, as it was imported from France), he created the now (righteously) legendary saga of the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion.

According to Tolkien, Fairy Tales are not allegories: they do not represent a metaphor of something happening here and now. They are rather "applicable". That is, they tell something of such universal value and meaning, that anyone, in any age, can find a way to apply the Fairy Tale to his experience. Because, as Tolkien puts it, he doesn't speak about lightbulbs, which are contingent to our time and experience, but about lightnings. Anybody can see the difference between a story where a policeman born in New York City on Jan 23rd, 1969, manages to arrest a local Mafia boss, and a story where a valiant ageless Knight, armed with shield and a magic sword earned through great peril, confronts and finally defeats an evil dragon whose intent is to burn down the whole Kingdom.
Everyone has a Dragon to kill, like Bilbo in The Hobbit. Bilbo's Dragon is called Smaug. Our Dragon could be called Established Beliefs, The Math's Teacher, Adolf Hitler, Physical Impairment...
In everyday's life, victory is never certain. Sometimes "evil", whatever that word might mean, wins. Sometimes, it loses. The power of Fairy Tales consists in providing the reader with hope. In this sense, holy books like the Bible or the Quran are "Fairy Tales", for their aim is precisely that of giving hope to the readers. So, Fairy Tales should really be taken much more seriously and not confined to the diminutive and often misused realm of children. Tolkien goes as far as to say children should never be spared the most gruesome details of a Fairy Tale. Either they read it all, or they'd better not read it.

Fairy Tales, in modern literature, have acquired a new name, one that was applied to them to account for the impossibility of relieving them from the sign "Books for Kids". They are now called Fantasy stories.
And I am fixated with Fantasy stories.

I am in complete agreement with Tolkien: Fantasy stories, the truly good ones, are those that ultimately give hope to the reader. In fact, they should be defined as stories about the Fantastic, which lead to a happy ending. Anything lacking one or both such attributes, should not in itself qualify as a truly Fantasy story.
Science Fiction, for example, is not truly Fantasy, or at least not in its most traditional form. Science Fiction (with which I am equally fixated) is only as good as it is acceptable by the reader. Star Trek is a very good example of perfect Science Fiction, and the books by Asimov are equally wonderful. In Science Fiction there is little room for what is Fantastic, because depicted stories must have a relatively cogent scientific basis. I hope to make it clear through a simple example: can you perceive the difference between a positronic robot a-la Asimov (incidentally, also like Data from Start Trek TNG, and not by chance), and a Dragon?
Dragons do not exist. They cannot exist. There has never been, nor there will ever be such a thing as a fire-breathing reptile with huge bat-like wings and mighty fangs.
Positronic robots do not exist as well, but they could at least in theory be real. They are loosely based on scientific theories.
Ultimately, the difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy is summarized in one, critical, detail: magic. There can be no magic in Science Fiction. Science Fiction is about technological marvels, which is precisely what Fantasy cannot be about. Because Science Fiction is about lighting bulbs, and Fantasy is about lightning bolts.
Mixing the two genders is usually criminal. They just do not intertwine. The only case I have seen Fantasy and Science Fiction mingle without devastating both genders was in the Star Wars Saga. But in that case, the mingling is purely superficial. Star Wars is ultimately not Science Fiction as much as it is "Space Fantasy". Especially as long as the concept of The Force was left out as some Magic rather than spoilt with the whole idea of Midiclorian (honestly, that completely spoilt the balance of Star Wars, in my opinion).
But I'd rather not digress and stick to Fantasy.

So, the ultimate difference with Dragons and Robots is that Dragons are magical. Magic is essential for human beings in many senses. Magic represents the desire of men to master what's beyond their control. It can be either a positive or negative concept, depending on who's the writer. Tolkien was adverse to Magic as he perceived it as an unspoken instinct to technology (after all, it is technology that serves the purposes ascribed to Magic). He even insisted that Elven Magic was not Magic, and that another word should be invented to describe it (the elves try to explain Frodo this very concept, in the Lord of the Rings).
Personally I am not adverse to Magic. I of course know that Magic doesn't work, but it somehow defines the charm of a Fantasy Story, which I have described as based on Magic after all.
Exposition to Fantasy (in the Tolkien's sense of stories that, through a Happy Ending, provide the reader with a sense of Hope) is in my opinion essential to every human, and this is the reason why humans of all ages and cultures keep inventing such stories.
I also believe that a stubborn belief in improvement can be the result of heavy exposition to fantasy, as opposed to a nihilistic pessimism which is often typical of our age. Personally I deem myself relatively optimistic, in the sense that I recognize this world basically sucks (with few notable exceptions) but I am also stubbornly convinced that it can improve and that in the end it will be improved.
I am convinced , as well, that this stubborn belief of mine is a consequence of the fact that I have read, and keep reading, a lot of fantasy that inevitably leads to a happy ending. In fact, I tend to dislike stories that lack a happy ending. They do not provide me with that sense of hope that is what, after all, we are looking when attempt to evade this world where happy endings are not necessarily the norm. This is not to say that I do not read or fail to enjoy completely sad stories, but I deem them less evocative and less poignant, in many ways.
Because, after all, let's be frank: take the story of a love that ends in tragedy when the beautiful young maiden is killed by disease (see, for example, Autumn in New York with Richard Gere and that marvelous beauty of Winona Ryder). As much as I loved that movie (and the main actress), and as much as it filled my heart with sincere grief and my eyes with warm tears (I weep a lot when I see such movies), there wasn't anything there that could compare with the feeling that stormed upon my heart when I saw the Rohirrim riding their horses against the evil Orcs, crying Death with their axes and swords raised...
The same feeling after all, that I felt when the Ents marched out of Fangorn to move war against the industrial abomination of Saruman. Considering my almost irrational love for nature, there's no reason to explain how it feels to see the trees reacting to the insults of men. Every time I see the movie or read the book, inevitably I tell myself "I wish trees could move war against industries".
Fantasy is about Dreaming, and there's no point at Dreaming if it's a bad dream. We all dream of a better world, and I presume no one is dreaming of a worse world. Hence why Fantasy is so dependant on its ultimate Happy Ending.
Tolkien called it the eucatastrophe, the "Happy Catastrophe". A final catastrophe that, when everything seems lost, reveals its happy ending.

There would be no relief if Sauron won. Saurons of our world win all the time. My Saurons are called Silvio Berlusconi, the evil dictator of Italy, Microsoft, the evil industry of Bill Gates, and pollution, and so on. I need, and I believe many others need, stories that tell us Bill Gates is not ultimately unbeatable. So, I feel no need to read that Sauron wins.
I also believe that most of those that would rather have it the other way, either weren't exposed to enough fantasy and are therefore lost their chance to become "hopers", or they have been disillusioned by the world, and therefore they have lost their ability to dream.
But dreaming is what humans do best. Dreaming is a natural feature of our brain. Dreaming is what led philosopher to state ideals that contrasted the obvious reality, and ultimately, it's been thanks to the dreams of certain people that civilization progressed. I already addressed this matter in another post a while ago.

A year ago, or so, I started my first attempt at writing a novel. I seriously lack time, and sometimes I doubt the skills either, to pursuit such an endeavour, but I am supported by a very limited number of readers. It is a fantasy story, and it's written in Italian (it also existed in an English translation, but it turned out too hard to type it in two languages, and my English reader wasn't even too satisfied of the result).
It is about two girls (I find it easier to write about girls, for many reasons - including the fact that when I was a kid, my favorite books included Little Women and Little Princess). One of them is a dreamer, the other one is anchored in her real world. They are both transported in some Elsewhere, where Magic works and castles float in the air. One through the power of her dreams, the other one sucked into it by the very fabric of the reality she was so fond of. In the Elsewhere, they will both learn to measure things, that is, mingle Dreaming with Realism to cope with life on both planes of existence. But first, they will have to join forces with the Five Wizards of the world of Elsewhere to defeat the evil Barnsheth, the Robber of Dreams.
At the level the story has been developed so far, Elena and Manuela, the two friends from our own world, are teleported to a magic land. Elena wakes up in the Castle that once belonged to the valiant Silver Paladin, a red haired maiden who lived centuries before and already defeated Barnsheth. The Castle is now inhabited by the Archmage Aristius, who believes Elena is the reincarnation of Artemis, although the teen-ager girl seems unfit to wear an armor and wield a heavy sword. Aristius sends Elena and five companions, chosen among the most powerful adventurers of the known lands, on a journey to recover the lost Diadem of Diamonds, a magic artifact that would grant Elena immense powers and account for her lack of physical strength.
At the same time, the athletic blonde Manuela is imprisoned by Barnsheth himself, and with great difficulty she finally accepts to be in a world of magic, where her main need is that of escaping Barnsheth's yoke.
The two friends will live an incredible adventure before meeting again, and the outcome has yet to be unveiled.

I love Fantasy. I love it because I love the Ride of the Rohirrim in the Fields of Pelennor. Because I love seeing Sauron's Tower of Barad-dur shattered like I'd hope for Bill Gates' empire.
Fantasy is about Dreaming.

And above all things, I am a Dreamer.

Post Number Forty-One: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

2005-07-15T19:04:00.000+02:00

Of the French Revolution

Yesterday was the 14th of July. On the 14th of July, 1789, the population of Paris, exasperated by Aristocracy and the Church, finally revolted: in one of the most famous pages of world history, the Parisiennes, helped by the National Guard, sieged and captured the prison called La Bastille.
This was the first act of a glorious Revolution that toppled the French Aristocracy and led the people of Paris to the creation of the first Republican government of their history.
Although a dozen years later the Republic was turned into an Empire by Napoleon Bonaparte, the French people had changed the Western World forever. When Louis XIV referred to himself, he was the King of France. Napoleon addressed himself as Emperor of the French.
The difference is subtle yet immense. For Louis XIV, the land mattered the most. He was the King of all the lands within the borders of France. He owned the land, therefore the inhabitants, of whom he could dispose according to his whims.
For Napoleon Bonaparte, the people mattered the most. For the fist time in Central Europe, Napoleon was not the Emperor of the land that fell within the borders of France, but the Emperor of the People that lived inside those borders. Thanks to the French Revolution, the People had returned to be the center of interest of the leaders; as it had previously been during the Roman history. Rome addressed itself as S.P.Q.R., "Senatus PopulusQue Romanus", The Senate and the People of Rome.
But what changed history the most was the Declaration of the Rights of Men, based on the Declaration of Independence of the United States, signed in 1776. A Declaration that the French people signed with but one mot in mind:

LIBERTE' , EGALITE' , FRATERNITE'

-LA LIBERTE'
Freedom. The first of three simple yet immense words. Freedom.
Freedom means to be allowed to think and speak openly, in public, and uphold your ideas. It means that no one can tell you what to do, that your desires lead your life and not those of the King.
Freedom is this blog you are reading. I am free to type it, you are free to read it.
Freedom is going out at day and at night, walking the street without the worry that some policeman might convict you because he doesn't like your face. Freedom is paramount. Freedom of speech is the first motor of culture. I tell you my ideas, freely, you answer me telling me yours, and we both grow together: my ideas enriched by your comments, and viceversa.
Freedom nowadays is often taken for granted, but it's not to be forgotten that, as it was stated during the early years of the Twentieth Century, "Freedom is like Air: you understand its importance when it's missing".
In the world the French people knew in the 1700's, Freedom didn't exist. The French fought for the ideal of being free, and today this Continent can call itself liberated. The European people are free, sometimes even more so than the Americans.
Freedom, I value above all things: there are things I won't do, like smoking a joint, and yet I still fight for the freedom others deserve of smoking their joints in peace.
Freedom must be always fought for. Those in charge don't like free people and free speech. Freedom is dangerous. It can lead people to think with their head and perhaps claim their leader is wrong. In the likely hypotesis they are right, the leader might have to stop exploit his subjects.
As Voltaire put it: "I don't agree with you, but I will fight to death to let you state your opinion". This is the essence of Freedom: being ready to fight to let those you disagree with speak their opinion.

- L'EGALITE'
Equality. For the French people of the 1700's people weren't equal. The King was best of all. Aristocrats were better than merchants. Priests were as noble as the Dukes and Archdukes. The laymen were nothing but servants. Laws differed depending on your social status. There was inequality.
But Jefferson had stated a new, immensely powerful claim: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."
Equal. We are equal. This is more than just an ideal: we are human beings. Of course some of us are beautiful and some are ugly, some are good and some are evil, some are smart and some are dumb, some are tough and some are weak. Don't think the French didn't know there were males and females in the world! But they thought, like I do today thanks to their Revolution, that what makes humans equal counts more than what makes them unequal. Despite the difference, we are ultimately similar. We suffer and we rejoice, we love and laugh and suffer and weep, we feel pain and pleasure, we eat and drink... we are all humans, and therefore members of the same great family. We are equal hence we share the same rights.
My friends, my enemies, my neighbors, and all those who live and lived on this planet, all the saints and sinners, all the lovers and warmongers, all the emperors and shephers, and every poet, musician, greedy manager, painter, sportman, beautiful and intelligent girl... every human being that was ever born in this small planet of ours is equal to us and shares my same rights.
It is an ideal the French thought worthy of dying for, and it truly is: for by being equals, we are taught to ignore the differences and stress the similarities. And by saying that, we will finally be led to realize that all living beings on this planet are equals. Because we share the same planet. We live side by side, sometimes one off the other, but in the end, we are equal.
Watch another human, and you'll see the mirror of yourself in her.

- LA FRATERNITE'
Brotherhood.
This is where the two previous ideals lead us to.
We are all free, we are all equal, and therefore we are all Brothers. The pain of one man is our pain. The joy of another is our joy. This is particularly poetic for it's not the result of some religious dogma, but the natural, rational consequence of the fact that all humans are Free and Equal. All together, we thrive on this world of ours as members of a one great human Family.
Today we take Freedom for granted, tend to forget Equality with great ease, and never ever glance at Brotherhood.

Yet, on the 14th of July, 1789, thousands of French people rallied under the ramparts of the Bastille under the spell created by these three grand ideals. The three ideals that even today the European Constitution has defined as the foundation of our Continent's culture. And they trascend the borders of Europe to extend across the oceans, uniting all the people of the world. It strikes me with awe and almost moves me, to think of so grand ideals sprung off the minds of a people that suffered for the whims of bored Aristocrats.

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Even today, the grandest ideals ever conceived by human minds.

Post Number Forty: Misunderstood

2005-07-13T23:30:00.000+02:00

Of How Hard It Is To Make Yourself Understood

I am not typing a blog for a wide audience. Hence, being understandable by a wide audience is not - and it won't be - my aim. Nonetheless, it is extremely interesting to see from the comments I receive that making one's self understood is a lost cause.

Those who know me, already know how I tackle things. Sometimes I choose the logic, rational approach (when I am serious). Sometimed instead, I just want to have fun and mock men. I love mocking men.
Anyway those who don't know me might be led to misunderstandings. Especially because most of the things I believe and say here, are not in line with this era's zeitgeist. Zeitgeist is a German word that means, more or less "Spirit of the Time". It doesn't really translate into any other language but German.
I will give an example.
In the Twentieth Century, mostly thanks to the Americanization of world culture, it is generally believed that Lightness is better than Weight. Weight is oppressive, tasking, depressing. People think that lightness is fun, but to be more precise, they think that fun is lightness.
Mindless, easy life with no thoughts, just entertainment, is fun. Entertainment is intended to be light.
This is so rooted in the spirit of our time that almost no one ever stops and wonder if entertainment should really be light. Has anyone considered the possibility that lightness might not be fun? A lot of people go to discos, which are a very light form of entertainment (as opposed, for example, to reading a philosophy text by Immanuel Kant in German). These people are quite positive that going to a disco is fun, and it is incidentally more fun than reading a text by Kant in German. The whole industry of entertainment has been built on the conception that the lighter is the better.
But is lightness really all that fun?
I am not trying to tell people what is fun, because I am here to tell people what I think is fun for me. Whether there is general agreement on the point is not my interest: in fact I already know there is no general agreement, otherwise the world would be more like the late 1700's and less like the early 1600's.
Because, see, there have been times in history when people thought otherwise: they thought that lightness was not fun. For example, the Roman Stoic philosophers really thought that light things were not so fun. They thought it was much more fun to read a text by Aristotle in Greek than going to the Coliseum to watch the Gladiators.
The French Philosophes thought it was really a damn lot of fun to write an Encyclopedia.
Ludwig van Beethoven was convinced that music would be much more fun to listen to and to write, if it was heavy with deep meanings, passion, intensity, and emotional charge. A big change with the previous generation when the people thought that music was fun if you could dance it.
So, the fact that today we think that light things are fun, is relative, not absolute. This is critical to understand my point.
If we accepted that lightness is the only possible way to have fun, then it might seem that I am a boring person that protests against his peers because they are having fun.
This is completely, utterly and immensely WRONG.
First of all, I am a supporter of Hedonists, and insist that we have the unalienable right to have fun. Having fun is a significant concern. Making life pleasant is paramount.
What I believe is that not everyone has fun in the same way. I am positive that Izzy, Sarong Party Girl, just to mention someone I stated I wouldn't mention again, is trying to have fun. She follows her own path to enjoy her life and I am vibrantly supporting her choice, regardless of the fact that I, for one, would not have fun living her life.

Then there is the question of why lightness might be not so fun.

And here's where I go one step further, telling an opinion that might be mistaken for an attempt to tell others what to do.

Lightness is dangerous. Our world has sunk into an ocean of lightness. There's a lot of things we deem important that are in fact transient and of scarce significance. They do not really matter. Things that matter are those that last. Human beings as individuals are here for a short time. We come, we live our short life, and then we go into oblivion. I am thoroughly convinced that this short permanence on this planet must be given a meaning. Not because I like it so, but because I believe that mankind needs a meaning. Why else are we so attracted by religion? Let's leave aside those that use religion as an excuse to let others tell them what to do. Let's talk about really religious people. Those that seek an answer for the reason they are alive for and ascribe it to some God. People like them revert to religion because they feel the void around them. They feel this world is empty, and whether they realize it or not, they are squeezed by the unbearable emptiness of the world. Life in itself is such a pointless thing: think about it. Think of herds of antelopes migrating back and forth across Africa. Imagine you are an alien on a starship, one that lives for a very long time, millennia; You look down at planet Earth and see antelopes migrating south and then north and then south and then north. Generation after generation, with no other reason to do so than producing another generation of migrating antelopes.
You could look down in the same way to mankind. But men are not antelopes.
Humans have this capability to create things that outlive them. They can think and stick to ideals, they have imagination, creativity and an immense potential. A human life can mean nothing. It could just be an insignificant transient mishap. But think of what humans can do in that life.
Think of the masterpieces sculpted by Michaelangelo. Think of the music written by Mozart. Think of the words signed in the Declaration of Independence. Think of the poetry of Shakespeare.
Can you feel the power of meaning? While there is nothing wrong with some light entertainment, I insist that our life cannot revolve around light, meaningless, transient happenings. It's dangerous. For us. For our inner selves. For our innate instinct to creativity, to imagination, to do things that outlive us.
When humans are induced to lose themselves in purely light, transient things, they often feel deprived of something. They feel something is missing. They can become nihilistic, think that everything in the world is pointless, that life is just a temporary wait till we can cease to exist for good. Very often this kind of universal pessimism induces humans to self-destruction.
If you have seen the movie Requiem for a Dream, you know what I mean. The author of the book that was turned into the same named movie, believes that our dreams are doomed and we are living in a world where nothing is worth much. Struggling is pointless. Life is cruel and everything sucks, plainly.
I refuse to agree.
I insist that this pessimism is derived by the overdose of lightness. I firmly state here and elsewhere that those who dare believing in ideals, those who dare fighting, those who create, love, and make things that last, they are not going to be nihilist-pessimists.
Think of Beethoven. At age 27 he turned deaf. Being deaf meant that he had to bid farewell to music, the only thing that really mattered for him. Can you imagine how it felt for him? If you have read the Testament of Heiligenstadt, a letter Beethoven wrote to his brother when he was in Heiligenstadt, Austria, you will know how humane and how moving the desperation of Ludwig van Beethoven was. In that letter, Beethoven stated he wanted to commit suicide. He saw everything was falling apart. His life, his greatest dreams, his hopes to live a normal social life. Being a deaf in the early 1800's, and a composer, moreover, meant to be cut off the world. And he loved social life. He yearned for contact with humans. But he was terribly ashamed of telling others "would you please write that down, I can't hear you". It's not nice. It does not feel nice. It's a pain. An immense pain.
But Beethoven did not commit suicide. After writing that letter, somewhere in his soul he found the strength to say no. If destiny opposes me, then I will fight destiny.
The result of this super-human struggle is the fifth symphony. Perhaps the most famous music ever composed. G-G-G-Eb. Destiny knocks at your door. Listen to it. Listen how the drama of the first movement slowly transforms into a fanfare when we reach the fourth, last movement. Compare the feeling of desperation created by these simple four notes that haunt the melody throughout the first part of the symphony, with the brilliant, joyous C major of the grand finale.
It's Beethoven telling us how it was for him. How terrible everything felt when destiny knocked at his door and how hard it was to fight his doom, and how powerful the joy for finding the courage to shout NO. To destiny.
There's all this in the fifth symphony.
But this is not lightness. There is no lightness in this. This is weight. It is giving a meaning to your life. It is fighting off the forces that oppose you and dare. And not only he won and became a famous composer: he's probably the most famous composer ever.
Don't you also feel inspired by this example? When I hear the fifth symphony I can't help being in awe of Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven was not a pessimist. He thought there were things worth fighting for.
Those who find a meaning for their life, tend to be not pessimist. And that's because humans need that meaning.
So, here's where my message becomes more "universal", that is: directed to many and not just me. When I daresay look: lightness, lack of meaning, pointlessness is dangerous. It leads to self-destruction.

Because lightness is not necessarily that much fun. Sometimes it can be terrible. Terribly hard to bear. Sometimes we just damn need some weight if we don't want to be overcome by the unbearable lightness of being

We should not end up believing that, simply because one human's life is but an insignificant thing in the eternal flow of time, it means that it is pointless, or that nothing good can come from it.

We live in a world inherited by the past generations. Some, actually many, of those humans have built architectural marvels, created artworks, chased ideals, written Constitutions and passed an immense legacy of culture, beauty, and dreams down to us.
I say, it's our duty to do the same for those that will follow us in the next generation. Let's not forget that some weight is necessary, that we are humans like those that came before us, and we can build upon what we received from them. There is an immense wealth of marvels that humans have created. We are humans. We can go on creating.

But we must never forget, that we need to attach a meaning to our life, that it cannot be all about having some light fun and reproduce. I insist: this is not what life is all about. This is what life would be all about for antelopes in Africa, not for men that write symphonies, build cathedrals, and sign the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

We are better than animals. We can avoid being squeezed by the Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Post Number Thirty-Nine: Sex Vampires

2005-07-12T22:46:00.000+02:00

Of the Relationship Between Men and Sex

I am fond of Gothic stories. In particular, I love Vampire stories. In the recent years, a new series of vampire stories were written by Anne Rice. Although I never read any of her books, I made an opinion of what kind of atmosphere she has created by watching recent movies on vampires. Interview with the Vampire was superb. I also enjoyed Underworld. I actually find underground goth culture fascinating.
Vampires, in modern literature, have created a sort of society, with allegiances and feuds, with subtleties and tricks. Something between Masonry and the Vatican. But all the social bonds fall apart when vampires need to feed. In the end, they are predators and they are after one thing above all: Blood.

Human males (and males of other species) have one thing in common with vampires. They have also created a sort of society, with their allegiances and their cult for the ultimate Penis deity, but everything falls apart when men need to fornicate.
The verb to fornicate, usually expressed in the form to fuck, is generally defined as a sexual intercourse between a non-married couple. Wow, there's a lot in this sentence. Sexual intercourse. Couple. Non-married.
It is generally agreed that sexual intercourse consists in putting the Penis deity inside a vagina and then move it in such a way as to create a friction with the labia and inner vaults of said vagina. This action normally requires :
1) a penis and
2) a vagina
Normally, men are endowed with only one of these requirements and this creates the first, grand problem of men. Fornication requires a couple. At least two individuals. One has a penis and the other provides a hole, preferably a vagina.
Women have a complex and refined relationship with sex. The way a woman approaches the feeling connected with sexual intercourse is so intense that it often resents poetry. Each woman feels intercourse in a different way. Some women are even afraid of that pleasure. Most men try to teach women that the pleasure they derive from sex is wrong. Some even indulge in telling them that taking pleasure from sexual intercourse is evil for a woman, that women are not meant to enjoy it. Some, especially in Africa, go straightforward mutilating clits and locking vaginas with stitches when the girls are still babies. It's called infibulation and it is the ultimate brutality of men against women.
Anyway, men live sex in a totally different way. Men rever the size of their penis, men love their leader and they measure his might by the size of his penis, but ultimately everything men do ends up in one thing: their need to put their own penis, no matter how large it is, inside a vagina, no matter whose vagina. When a woman's bladder is full, she feels the need to pee. When the penis of a man is bored, it feels the need to fuck. Sex for a man is like the need to pee for a woman.
Confronted with this desperate desire, men forget everything about leaders, masters, sexy women, power, war, evil, good, and whatnot. They need a hole and they need it soon. As soon as they have eased their need, they'll be back to the old society and its rules, but before, it's like blood for a vampire. Anything else comes second.
Men are so driven by this need for sex that they do not even really enjoy sexual intercourse as much as women do. There is no comparison between a man's and a woman's orgasm. Judging from how sex has evolved, it seems that in the human race sex has the purpose of pleasing women and calming down men.
Men find a humongous obstacle on their penis' path to the holiest of holes. Since women do not approach sexual life like they approach a toilet, sometimes they just do not wish to have sex with a particular man. Maybe they'll love to have sex with every other man in the world but one. And that one really needs to pee his sperm cells somewhere.
There are usually two possible solution for the most desperate man:
1) masturbation: that is, using his own hand to create the required friction and temporarily solve his problem. It doesn't feel completely the same, yet I have heard of men that indulge in this activity more than five times per day. Quite a feat indeed.
2) rape: that is, whether the girl likes it or not, the brutish ape will put his own penis inside her vagina, end of the story. This is usually considered very bad manners and quite heedless as far as the girl is concerned. Sometimes, even men understand it's not too nice to rape girls, especially because it could be their girl.
Their girl.
What does it mean, their girl? Certainly, men do not think they own other men, usually, but they think they own a girl. Here's what happened at a certain point of men's history.

Men needed to feed their penis with some friction, and normally they would prefer a different girl's hole each time, but it's a rather difficult task to convince a number of women to provide their holes and besides, men like to know the offsprings are theirs and not someone else's. So men sat around a table and thought: how do we get to put our penis in a hole whenever we need to feed it and at the same time stop killing each other because we fear someone else is reproducing? Then, some particularly brilliant man proposed: There's enough women for every men after all, so instead of fornicating with every girl we meet, let's put a sign of some sort on one particular girl and let's call it a property of one man only! Each one gets a hole to feed his penis and no one gets hurt. Cool uh?
It was of course a man's idea, therefore quite an imbecile one, especially because women weren't asked an opinion (maybe they would rather have more than one man around, considering the high risk they ran that one man could be an imbecile). Men didn't really care too much about women back then (neither they do today, normally) and stood up clapping their hands and chose a name for this certificate of property, and they called it marriage, and decided that it was such a good thing, that each man could have his own personal sex toy for free , that they even invoked their religions to bless the idea. They decided that it was a Divine Institution, that the entire society could be founded on this cool thing. Amazing, men thought: now they could take one girl, celebrate a marriage, and their penises would have a permanent hole to enjoy friction with.
Men established precise rules: once a girl is owned it's private property and other men can't have it. You know, it's because it's hard to get some resources to exploit and sharing what is so rare already would be disastrous. Besides, there always was that children matter, and who the father was...
Unluckily men hadn't taken into account a few interesting details:
1) girls also enjoy sex, much more than they do, yet they are not enslaved by any need to fuck.
2) knowing that a girl is someone else's property induces other men to steal it, if anything to show that man that they own a much larger penis (being the size strictly connected with blunt actions like stealing girls)
3) girls are not objects
number 3) is still impossibly taught to men even nowadays.

In order to account for points 1) and 2), men created laws to punish adultery (usually punishing the girl), instructed girls that sex is bad and evil and so on. For point 3) there's nothing to do. There's only that much a man's brain can fathom, and as we say in Italian, one can't squeeze blood out of turnips.

Nowadays, after millennia since marriage was invented, men are horrified when girls enjoy sex. They see that as a potential threat basically: a girl that plays around with her vagina is likely to be impossibly contained within the bonds of marriage. It's a disaster. They might not own her, ever. She might be impossible to tame and to instruct to give her vagina for free to one man only.
Giving it for free by the way is critical for men. Having to pay for sex feels like paying a tax on breatheable air. Can you imagine a vampire having to pay to drink blood? What's worst is that the need for blood is so intense that a vampire would pay for it, but then he would feel like shit. Men hate it when they have to pay to feed the needs of their penis. That's why they are so quick at chastizing prostitution. Not only they have to bear the pain of needing to put the penis in a vagina, but they also need to pay to satisfy this natural necessity. How evil.

Men are sex vampires.

For a standard man, it doesn't really matter how beautiful or intelligent or important his woman is. Have a look at the standard laymen couple. Unfulfilled and dissatisfied human blobs. Why? Because they got married simply because she was the only woman that gave his penis a hole for free. Sometimes men are beyond redemption. I would rather take an Oscar Wilde then, one that has the guts to seek pleasure rather than the need to pee.

Because, luckily, as well as not all men revere their penis, not all men confuse sex with the need to pee. Hedonists (a category of people which I respect a lot) seek pleasure above all, they would never have sex with anyone unless this anyone is a pleasurable person. But they would never have sex with one person only as well.

In a certain sense I am also a hedonist, in the sense that I also seek pleasure in my own way. I don't go for the excesses that are typical of real hedonists of course. But I despise immoral chauvinist institutions that are meant to frustrate life rather than exhalting it.

Personally, I am not fond of sex. I understand and appreciate those that seek it for their pleasure, but personally I find it annoying as I said somewhere else. Foreplay and other practices are much more fun. The best, in my opinion, is taking a woman to orgasm without the need to have intercourse with her. Playing with a woman's body to provide her with pleasure is almost an artistic way to enjoy sexual life. In my opinion.

I also have a very peculiar relationship with activities that others relate to sex.
I'll give an example. Whenever I was told I could, I loved to kiss my friends. I am speaking of course of French kisses. Kisses are lovely. They are sweet and intimate and not nearly a sexual activity, regardless of what everyone else believes. I love to French girls, but I prefer to kiss friends: it's a great way to tell them I adore them. But of course, most of them would disagree on this point. And I am not really the type that would infringe their rules.

But then again, this would take me too far, and it's too late, and this post is about men and their vampiric attitude towards sex. So, goodnight, and see you.

PS: There was another entry number thirty nine before. I read it and considered it disgusting. I couldn't accept I wrote it. So I made this one, which is a lot better. In my opinion.

Post Number Thirty-Eight: Haunting Unbearable Lightness of Being

2005-07-11T22:53:00.000+02:00

Of a Train of Thoughts Induced by Lack of Sleep, and Of the Always Unbearable Lightness of Being that Triggered The Creation Of This Blog

I admit I am (pleasantly) surprised. First of all, this mail I got. On an old account, one I should shut down soon. It was telling me someone wrote a testimonial for me on my page on friendster.com. I have to be honest and point out that I open that page very rarely. I don't know why it doesn't really catch up with me. Perhaps because in the end, I am too talkative. Many things can be said about me, but certainly not that I am coincise. Well, someone said that too but he was probably on high.
Anyway, I got this testimonial notification, and noticing who wrote it, I just couldn't wait to see it.
Look, let's be straightforward, for once in my life. Who wrote it knows I am talking of her words. I'll be frank, my friend. Your esteem almost moved me. Really. I don't exactly know what is it that I have done or said to deserve so much from such an intelligent human being, but know that, for an incredibly long time (entire minutes!) you left me wordless.
And that is quite a feat. For anyone.

Then, there is the sudden "popularity" of my blog. I never really thought it could be of interest to those who don't know me already. Actually I thought I was going to be the only one reading it (and actually I don't read it). Nonetheless it seems that a number of people, whose comments evidently indicate an interesting mind behind the hands that typed them, have come here, read my words, and (with my pleasure) keep returning. I feel the urge to apologize for not taking into account the fact that more people are reading me now. I'll keep typing as if I and few others were the only readers, because that's how thoughts flow out of my mind. And if you keep returning, you will always have my warm welcome.

Hopefully, Miss Izzy, the Singaporean famous Party Girl, will excuse me if I quote her by saying that blogs are strange. Although not for the reason she mentioned in her entry, a few days ago. More precisely, for other reasons too, one of which is that they drive people close to someone else's mind, even when this someone is faraway, and never met.
Heh, what am I saying? I must be really sleepy if I can't see what I am saying: blogs are like books. Good philosophy books, sometimes, or good diaries. Or bad books, depending on who the writer is. When we open a book, a magic box of immense power, we hear and feel the words and thoughts of someone who is not near. But you need to be an accomplished author to publish a book (which is a nonsense, if you think about it). Anybody, instead, can type a blog. And read it for free. Does this equal to say I am writing a book here? No. Not really. It's just a flow of thoughts, although I admit my entries are often connected, in subtle ways.
But I am writing a book after all. A fantasy novel. But that's another of my fixations, fantasy, and nobody deserves two fixations on the same day.

Hadn't I loved English so much, my blog would be in Italian. This means that no one would probably enjoy it unless they were fluent in Italian. But then again, I do love English. Many things happen by mere coincidence. Human beings find it very hard to accept that, very often, there is no reason why things happen. They just do happen. Or actually, there is a reason in the sense that whatever happens is always the result of something else that happened before and triggered a chain of consequences. In this neverending game of causes and effects, our brains, or more precisely, living things, are the chaotic element. A micro-current flows through the synapses of a certain brain of a certain living being, and triggers an unpredictable and unforeseen action, which in turn activates a flow of consequences that branch throughout the spectrum of possibilities. Sometimes I entertain myself thinking of what would happen if something apparently insignificant never took place.
During the early centuries of the glorious history of Rome, the Gauls came very close to razing the city. Their plan was to attack at night and catch the Romans by surprise. But geese (I mean the birds, yes) on the Capitol (which is the main hill of Rome and not the Congress in Washington DC) were disturbed in their sleep by the approach of the Barbarians and their quacks waked up the Roman soldiers. The plan of the barbarians failed, and Rome was saved. By quacking geese.
Absolutely beautiful. If there hadn't been geese on the Capitol Hill that night, I would most likely not be here today. I would not even exist. It makes quite an effect to think I owe my very existence to a quacking goose. But it makes much more an effect to think that somehow, everything that happened after the geese woke up the Romans actually led to some of the most beautiful pages of human history: the pages that tell us of the Roman civilization.

Those who started reading my blog only recently, in my opinion are missing the best entries. Why is this blog called "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"? It was the topic of my very first post. Those who wish to know, should have a look, perhaps.

When I started typing this post, I wanted to mention the fact that I do not believe in God. Then I realized I did it already, in my post number two. Perhaps I should start reading back my old entries. Lest I start repeating myself. Not that I don't normally repeat myself.

I once talked about my blog with a Russian girl I adore. I know she wouldn't agree with most of my writings, especially about Art, although of course I am not going to change my opinion on what Art means. Her opinion, anyway, counts a lot (although not hers alone). I tried to explain then, what this blog was all about. Why I am typing it. What I am trying to do by typing it. I thought it would be very easy to explain, but then it turned out it wasn't. I had to think about it seriously before realizing this is an exploration. I am probing my own mind, in the same way I loved to dissect and analyze pretty much anything I've come upon. If a pattern exists in everything, then a pattern exists in my mind too.
There are certain milestones, in my way of viewing the world. One of them is weight. I need it. I crave it. I yearn for it. I do not gain pleasure from lightness. Perhaps it's a limit, but I am proud of it in my own way. We live in a world where light, inane things seem to be what counts the most. Buying the newest trendy wear. Going out dancing. Having mindless fun. No thinking. No fusses. No hidden meanings to find. Just instant satisfaction.
Don't you feel it's void? I do. My own experiences at the Disco were tragic if not melancholic. First of all, few things I hate more than dancing. Especially because I *really* can't stand disco music. Much less loud disco music. I am that boring and proud of it, yes. So I sat by the counter and watched them, and thought about them. Them, the people. The Saturday Night youngsters that paid more than they'd probably milked out of their parents in one week, to be there and dance. The loud, ultimately empty music. So loud they were numbed by it. Their minds devoid of everything. Emptied. All that existed was the mind numbing sound, the dance, and the hope of taking a girl home and have sex. Mindless sex.
Then I understood them. In the empty world we live, the world of brand new SUV and soft-porn pop videos, the world of grades and exams, the world of social restrictions and mind-boggling threats, these people were just trying to flee, to evade, to find a way out. To clear their mind and stop thinking. To just go there and dance and let the music daze them bringing them to the verge of being dancing machines.
For a split second I almost envied them. I would find no pleasure in this empty replacement for a vacuous void. Then I realized I couldn't envy them. Instead I felt there was a melancholic lack of weight in the world. I suddenly knew why most of those very dancing guys and girls end up taking ecstasy and then something else. And then something tougher than that. And at the end you find them half-dead on the corner of a decadent building in the peripherals of our civilized capitals. They are squeezed not by weight, but by the unbearable lightness of being. This lack of weight is so destructive of humanity, that we almost feel the urge to fill it. Because if we don't, what's life worth?
But then again, I am repeating myself. I know already that I, for one, feel a desperate need for weight. Just that. I love thinking. I love being induced to think. I love reading things that make me think. I am perhaps a thinking machine. And then I love typing my thoughts.

And so the people get convinced that, for sure, they aren't dealing with a normal person.

But that's what I love the most of myself, after all.

Post Number Thirty-Seven: Cosmic Rhapsody

2005-07-11T18:38:00.000+02:00

Of my Fixation with Science

I spent a long time in University, for various reasons, majoring Physics. Taking for granted no one among my readers is going to take me for a normal person, I won't digress on what my peers think of me for the simple fact that I chose to major Physics. Physics is very much like a part of my inner self: the human attempt to find a logical path lurking beneath the chaotic superficial appearance of reality.
We have been lucky to live in a universe where natural phenomena can be described through mathematics. If you think about it, mathematics should be a consequence of the way our mind works (when it works), and it should come as an astounding marvelous surprise that equations can predict the course of natural events. I have no intention to waste my (and especially your) precious time digressing in the old argument whether God exists or not and whether He created the world or not. Personally, I shall be honest: I don't care if God exists or not. I have no reason to believe the Christian God (as described in the Bible) exists for real, and I admit that a different kind of God (a-la Immanuel Kant) could exist, or could not as well. Anyway God is not the point here.
In fact, what I am concerned with in this moment, is that I can tell you precisely how long a stone will take to fall from my hand to the ground. I can even tell you what kind of curve a missile will draw in the sky before falling on the head of the next enemy of the American interests. I am not going to tell you this by watching in a crystal ball or uttering magical syllables. I will just write down a few equations and there you go: I give you the answer. And it's gonna be right (unless I make likely mistakes while computing of course).
We live in a universe where, for some incredible coincidence, mathematics are not just a puzzle for absent-minded nerds, but a tool to describe the effects of natural phenomena. Isn't that amazing?
Of course, the charm of this fascinating universe was completely lost in the University, where everything gravitates around grades, exams, tests and whatnot. Things that have little to nothing to do with the natural phenomena we should be studying.
Italian teachers are perhaps unique in the world.

More than 1000 years ago (no typo, I mean one thousand years), the University of Bologna (central Italy) was founded. More or less in the same century another University was founded in Pavia, 60 kms south of Milan, a city that back then was the capital of a local relatively powerful kingdom. Our millenary tradition of University should guarantee for an immense amount of experience, grounded on centuries above centuries of scholarship. In fact, the University of Bologna is the ancientmost in Europe, and I presume in the world too.
Nonetheless, the Twentieth century brought a new form of evil upon our schools: a philosopher known as Benedetto Croce. Let's put aside the fact that he was the official philosopher of Fascism. He also believed, for some reason, that science and art are "inferior" to literature, and that practice is inferior to theory. As a consequence, our Universities were shaped by Mussolini according to the infamous "Riforma Gentile", a plan of Reformation created by Gentile, a Fascist minster, and based on the theories of Benedetto Croce. You can imagine the consequences. Especially because, after that Reformation, no one ever thought of reconsidering it. Well, until we got the present dwarf dictator, Berlusconi. Berlusconi believes that Universities are a sort of business company and they should be led accordingly. What was bad has become worse. But I would rather avoid discussing this kind of things in detail. My stomach is not strong enough to stand the laws imposed by Berlusconi and his bunch of gangsters.
It will suffice to say that the experience I had in University was so disappointing that, despite my natural passion for science, I just couldn't swallow the lectures and especially the teachers.

I spoke so much about these inanities, that I totally forgot why I started typing this post. It certainly had to do with the fact that I spent a long time in University, but unluckily I have no idea what it was supposed to be about. And the fact that I use cryptic titles doesn't help much.

Luckily (or unluckily, depending on my reader's disposition towards my posts) I have many interests, and a number of fixations I keep mumbling over and over again. My fixation with science has deep roots, perhaps the deepest if we don't consider classical music (Classical Music, I can say, has been a part of me since I was born).
I usually like to mark my entrance in the world of science with the day when I was given "Cosmos", a book by Carl Sagan. I presume it's widely known in Anglosaxon countries. In Italy it was almost unknown, especially because the TV program didn't go on air in the country (still thanks to Benedetto Croce's philosophy, yes). I had smallpox and I was trapped in bed. It was the year 1981 and one of my mum's pupils (my mum is a pianist and teaches piano at the Conservatory of Milan) decided, out of the blue, that I had to read Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Yes, in Italian. I might be not normal but I can assure you I spoke no English at 7 year old.
The reading was mind boggling. I admit I didn't really get the whole idea. In fact I read that book again. Five times to be precise, before I turned 12.
There was something with how Carl Sagan wrote about science that just made me dream. I don't know if you ever read anything by Carl Sagan. If you did, you know what I am talking about. It's poetry. Scientific poetry in a way, however this might sound as an oxymoron. Saying that I loved the book is a ridiculous way to put it. Ludicrous. I love an amazing number of books, but I haven't read them five times in five years before turning 12. And I read Cosmos another 4 times after the age of 12. Last time I read it I was 24 and fully aware of its meaning. But not a jot less in awe of that starry vault upon my head.
Incidentally, when I was reading Cosmos for the eighth time, I was also studying Immanuel Kant during my final year in High School. I never truly appreciated Kant's approach to philosophy, but I could never forget his statement: "I live my life with the moral law inside me, and the vault of the starry sky above me". Especially the second part. For sure, when Kant said that, he was feeling the same I did when reading Cosmos, and went out at night watching that starry sky above my head. I couldn't say it any better.

I am fascinated by space. That's why I love *certain* science fiction (that excludes completely the movie Alien, its sequels, its prequels, its latest apocalyptic epiphanies and anything remotely resembling it). In fact, my ideal science fiction show has always been Star Trek. I was desperately fond of Spock when I was young. I actually am STILL desperately fond of Spock.
But Star Trek is another of my fixations and I don't think any of my readers deserve more than one fixation per day, so I will give this post a break. Besides, I am just blabbering. I typed a lot considering I don't know what I started this post for after all. And, what counts the most, I am hungry: and since food isn't going to get cooked by itself and even fixated idealists need to feed themselves, I really think I have more mundane activities to dedicate myself to.

This much, to say: sayonara.

Note: Considering the popularity of Bozzetto's cartoon "Italy and Europe", I placed a link to the right. In case someone missed the post.

Post Number Thirty-Six: Freedom

2005-07-10T19:32:00.000+02:00

Of the Celebrations for the End of Fascism

In 1922, Benito Mussolini took power in Italy and transformed the young nation (Italy was unified in 1860) into a dire dictatorship. Mussolini's folly led Italy to WWII on the side of Nazi Germany, until on April 25th, 1945, the Allied forces and the leftist rebels, united, liberated the country.

During the Fascist era, Italians knew no freedom, nor peace. Incidentally, 2005 is exactly 60 years after the fall of Fascism. The City Hall of Bergamo, a nice town in the North of Italy, hired the cartoonist Bruno Bozzetto to celebrate the return to Freedom. Since I have noticed the last cartoon by Bozzetto met some appreciation from my readers, I'll be glad to link to another, although this is not hilarious. I actually find it very poetic.

I would like to dedicate it to all those that just don't fit in the narrow space others have drawn for them. That includes me, incidentally.

So, to all those that seek Freedom, here's the link to Bozzetto's cartoon:

http://www.bozzetto.com/libert%E0.htm

Note: Captions are in Italian. Here's a translation:
"La Libertà" : Freedom
"La Libertà va sempre conquistata" : Freedom must always be conquerred

Post Number Thirty-Five: Italians and Europeans

2005-07-10T14:48:00.000+02:00

Of the Difference Between Italians and Europeans

Bruno Bozzetto is a renowned Italian cartoonist. His sense of humor often tends to sarcasm but never fails to crack me up. He made this short flash cartoon about the difference between Italians and Europeans, giving a perfect portrait of what life is like in Italy. Long ago I was asked to link to this cartoon on my blog, so here you are: Follow the link and enjoy the cartoon

http://www.infonegocio.com/xeron/bruno/italy.html

Post Number Thirty-Four: Beautiful Life

2005-07-10T12:36:00.000+02:00

Of the Beauty of Small Things and of the Pursuit of Serenity.

When I start typing a post, normally, I know what I want to talk about. So I choose the title first, and type the post later.
Today, I will let my thoughts out freely without choosing a precise topic first. Possibly because I am in a conflicting and thoroughly contrasting mood. It's a mixture of melancholy and awe, amazement and nostalgia.
Where to begin from? I suppose it doesn't really matter. Two nights ago I indulged in watching American Beauty (the movie with Thora Birch and Kevin Spacey) for the second time. I am insanely fixated with movies (and books). This I stated already before, in my previous post on fixations. If you have seen American Beauty, you know what it's about. I will give my interpretation of the movie. If you haven't seen the movie, perhaps you shouldn't read further since I am going to spoil much of it.
Kevin Spacey plays the part of your typical American bourgeois. He's married and has a teen age daughter. He is sad, unfulfilled, disappointed. He doesn't have sex with his wife, doesn't talk to his daughter, who in turn hates him to the verge of hoping for his death. The reasons for this man's disappointment is that he is trying to live life the way others expect him to.
Then, the sight of an alluring blonde cheerleader, clicks something in Kevin Spacey's character's mind. He begins to live the life he wanted to live. He drops his job as a journalist after 14 years of career and gets an employment in a fast food, as waiter. "I want the least possible responsibilities" he tells the employer. He starts living his life. He chases his dreams and desires. Certainly, he's no more fitting in the kitsch ideal of American family.
At a certain point, a new character moves in the neighborhood. A former Marine soldier with scarce social life, who hates gays and tries to raise his only child with "discipline". This child, a teenager involved in selling drugs, in my opinion represents the director of this movie. First of all, he goes around with a videocam always in his hands. Second, he's the one that tries to tell the audience what's the hidden meaning of the movie. Because everything has a hidden meaning.
In a strikingly poetic scene, a paper bag is showed dancing in the wind among withered leaves. There is a surprising beauty and a nostalgic atmosphere in this simple sight. Yet it proves the point of the movie. There is a hidden beauty in all things, and most of us deny this beauty because we can't perceive it, because we waste our precious life in the attempt of appearing as something we are not.
In a certain sense, American Beauty reminds me of another movie I have seen, and loved a lot: Coffee and Cigarettes. Ok, true enough: I hate coffee and cigarettes. I drink tea and do not smoke. Anyway, most people think that coffee and cigarettes are pleasurable, and the movie uses them as a "symbol" of what is pleasant. In the last, most poetic scene, two elders talk by a table, drinking a coffee.
One is literally dreaming. He lifts the cup of coffee imagining it's champagne. His toast is to Paris in the Twenties. That is, lightness and pleasure.
"Let's drink another coffee", the dreaming elder says
"We don't have time, it's about time to go back to work", the other answers. This other elder is all about duties and responsibilities. He insists to go back to work, don't waste time pleasuring yourself with coffee.
But the dreaming elder drinks his cup of coffee.
And dies.

There really is no way to explain this concept with words. It's like a Zen story, a Buddhist parable. What are we running after? Why can't this elder drink his last cup of coffee?
He died with pleasure in his lips (literally). Because he did what he wanted to do, in the end.
Ok, I wasn't expecting to mention her again, but isn't this ALSO the story of Sarong Party Girl, Izzy? Chastized like Kevin Spacey's character for living her life the way she likes it, and therefore not fitting the general idea of "good girl" that Singapore's government tries to hammer into its people? And the people that offend and insult her, are just like the old man telling his friend not to drink his cup of coffee because it's time to go back to work. Why denying him his last moment of pleasure? After all we are all going to die, whether we like it or not. If we died right now, would we be pleased of how we lived our life? Would we die with a smile on our lips?
Because this is the concept. It's not about how you obeyed your boss and stuck to your duties and therefore came to the end of your life with a certain sense you did what you had to do. It's about dying with a satisfied, pleasant, light smile on your lips. The smile I presume appears on Izzy's lips when she's doing what she enjoys the most. The smile that appears on my lips when, instead of rushing in my office like everyone else around me, I stop for a second and look north to the astounding profile of the snow-capped Alps, which I can see from the parking lot outside my office.
Most people are unfulfilled and disappointed with their lives. Maybe they think otherwise, but in the end they are not doing what they wish. This is ultimately sad. And they live on because they know everyone else is in the same condition. But when they see someone, in this world, is blissful, this they can't accept. I perceive the way certain colleagues of mine find it annoying that I am never stressed or disappointed at work. I like what I am doing. I like my peers. I like the Alps outside, I like my life, even if I bet most people would hang themselves rather than living my life. I don't do what people expect from me. I do what I feel right for me.
I feel peaceful. Serene. I don't desire happyness. That's an extreme, I dislike extremes. Besides, happyness is transient. What I desire is to be serene and calm in all those moments when I am not plain happy.
This is perhaps the reason why I find Buddhism so resonant with my inner self.
How many of us really realize how beautiful is a paper bag in the wind?
There is a Zen story I like to quote every now and then.

A man was chased by a tiger. He ran through the jungle and suddenly he reached the edge of a cliff. Losing his balance, with the tiger still after him, the man fell off the cliff. As he watched the ground below, he saw another tiger waiting for him at the end of the fall.
He looked around, and saw a flower growing on the slope. How beatiful that flower was!

This Zen story is again about the same topic. Dying with a smile on your lips. Perceving the beauty of a flower while you are falling off a cliff after being chased by a tiger, aware that another tiger is about to eat whatever remains of you after you hit the ground. Of all this fearsome perspective, what matters the most is the beauty of the flower. Because the beauty of a flower can fill our heart with an immense joy.
The flower can be something else for everyone. I see the beauty of the flower when I sit in front of the city hall in Stockholm, Sweden, and watch the calm lake Mälaren and the vast green woods that cover the islands of the city. Because Stockholm is a city among woods. A park city. When it rains in Stockholm, you can smell the scent of a forest while walking in the streets. It's beautiful. It's charming. It feels my heart with a sense of serenity that I miss all the year round.
But someone else can find this bliss in sex, or in a butterfly, or in the people of the world, or in a teardrop, or a shining star, or the light at dusk. There is so much beauty in this world, so much charm, that we should be thankful for passing by to witness it. Why wasting it? Why pretending it doesn't exist?

Why letting life stress us and why letting others tell us what kind of life we should live, forgoing all the beauty of the world to just be "one of the many", something others will call normal and won't consider worth of anything more than a passing glance?
I would feel so empty, if I were "normal". Luckily, of all the people I have met, no one ever called me a normal person.

I love classical music, books, thoughtful movies, the Sindarin language, the plants of Stockholm, the British people, emancipated girls, the profile of the Alps, the foam of the Mediterranean, the scent of woods, the starry sky above my head, the courage of Thomas Jefferson, the skin of Jessica Alba, the mind of my Singaporean friend Viv, the charm of my Russian friend Tatiana, the smile of my Italian friends (incidentally almost all my friends are females - which is the proof that men and women *can* be friends). I love monuments, I love the sound of an organ and chinese tai music, I love the painted glasses of Cathedrals (no matter how I despise the local priests), I love dusk and night time (I am a creature of the winter dusk, as most tell me). I love graveyards in Scotland with mist and glaring tombstones. I love Japan and its culture. I love China and its charm, I love the woods of Norway and the castles of England, the Tour Eiffel and the Coliseum. I love Romans, I love Greeks and butterflies. I love animals. I love cats and lions, tigers and elks. I love the feeling of a morning breeze in Finland.
How could I be stressed in a world where there is SO MUCH to love?

I wonder if anyone would dare read so far. I guess this is quite a boring entry. But I don't type for my readers, I type because I feel like typing.

I was saying at the beginning that I was feeling amazed. Well yes. I really didn't expect to discover something I found out no longer than 60 minutes ago. I found another comment from Izzy, in my blog. Considering that my blog is probably the last thing a normal teenager would like to read, I felt somehow proud that that teenager, instead, still drops by. As usual ever since Viv mentioned Sarong Party Girl on her blog, I paid a visit to Izzy's musings, and ... well, there was a link to my blog...
Well, if you are reading here, thank you Izzy. I am glad you appreciate this blog enough to consider it worth a link on yours. I presume this means that a lot of people will see the link and drop by to pay me a visit. I expect most of them to flee in terror. I'm of course going to love those that won't.

Today, I have decided not to spit poison on anyone. I often complain about Americans, about the Church, about our stupid dwarf dictator. If I do that, it's because in the end I just wish people were serene. I know they could, they just don't see the point. You know why I am so angry with the Italian government, why I am so ashamed of being a citizen of this Medieval dictatorship? Because I love Italy. I love it so much that it makes my heart bleed to see it reduced to a land of idiotic girls and zombified apes.

I think I have said enough. And I have chosen a title for this post. I bid my readers goodbye and see you in my next post.
Au revoir!

Post Number Thirty-Three: It's a Matter of Style

2005-07-10T01:16:00.000+02:00

Of the British Reaction to London Bombings

Sometimes I am recalled to the real world by the most unlikely chain of events.
In the past two days I have thought about typing a word or two on the Brits and on why I love them, but then I was distracted by various activities, most of which rather mundane.
I was now indulging in one of my fixations, that is women. In fact, I was considering how flawless and close to perfection Jessica Alba's skin is. Her body would be very close to my ideals if only she wasn't so petite. Had she somewhat broader shoulders, perhaps slightly larger bones... but the skin is perfect, or very close to perfection. And her muscles very elastic and flexible. Lovely, but something is missing... Anyway, seeing that she is not perfect enough, I jumped away from her pictures and moved on to Viv's blog, one of my favorite pasttimes after all. That reminded me of London, and I can't just let time go by without praising the Brits.

It has been said by Winston Churchill that the days when the powercrazed Nazis bombed London were the most glorious days for England.
Now I know what he meant.

How do people react to fear?

Let's go back in time.
When Saudi Arabians (SAUDI ARABIANS: heard this name? S-A-U-D-I A-R-A-B-I-A-N-S) attacked New York City (probably for fun) they toppled the Twin Towers. Americans reacted by screaming and shouting and rallying in cathedrals singing "Glory Glory Hallelujah" and showing off their muscles. Then they caught the occasion to invade Afghanistan and build an oilduct through that nation. Later they invaded Iraq, which had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda, had no weapons of mass destruction, and was pretty much minding its own business posing zero threat (ZERO THREAT: heart this concept? Z-E-R-O T-H-R-E-A-T) to the USA.
Fear, screams, panic and some rich bastards that caught the occasion to invade innocents leaving the responsible terrorists in peace. Nobody invaded, attacked or reprimanded Saudi Arabia. Still, almost all the terrorists on the planes that toppled the Twin Towers were Saudi Arabians. Osama Bin Laden is Saudi Arabian. Saudi Arabia has declared war against the Usa. Hello? Republican dickheads? Anybody home? It's SAUDI ARABIA, your source of oil dollars, that is attacking USA, not Iraq and not Afghanistan. No way trying to talk to the deaf. Americans are convinced it's been Saddam Hussein.
Maybe tomorrow Bush will tell them it's been China. Or North Korea. Or Iran.
It's been Saudi Arabia, anyway.

Pathetic. I am sorry for the American people. No one deserves the evil multinational companies that plague America.

Now terrorists (Saudi Arabians?) attacked London.
The next day, life was going on as usual, almost as if nothing had happened. No scenes of panic, no rallying in cathedrals singing "God Save the Queen"; I have seen people with stitches talking quietly at the news as if they had no bruises.
The Brits cannot be scared off. They do not lose control. The Brits are not afraid of the bombs that exploded in London. They are not panicking.
This is precisely what I esteem and admire in a people. One of the things I find most annoying in Southern Italians is the way they think they have to stress, uselessly exaggerating their emotions. Crying and shouting for any stupid reason.
In front of pain and disaster, the Brits haven't been shaken at all. They are back to their lives, keeping their emotions well hidden within their heart, which is where they are supposed to stay. The terrorists have lost their battle in England because they can't bring terror in London. The Brits don't react to fear. They have a dignity that most other peoples (Italians for example) do not have.
After this terrorist attack I understood how it must have been in London when the Nazis exploded V2s on the city.
Simply, the Brits were unshaken. They kept living, reacting with their undestructible dignity against brutality.
Incidentally, a people that knows no fear will not fall prey of dictatorship. In fact, Britain is the only country in Europe that never knew extremist dictatorships. There has never been a British Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, Pétain, Stalin.
I am in awe of the British people and their reaction to bombings. The Brits don't go on the street shouting and screaming and *pretending* to be suffering. They suffer in silence, with British dignity and honor.

Thank you, British people, for this lesson of dignity. I mourn your dead in silence and honor the Union Jack, and wish you to stay British forever.

We all should learn from them.

Post Number Thirty-Two: Dickheads

2005-07-07T18:12:00.000+02:00

Of the Role of Chemistry on the Mind of Stupid Men.

The fact that a number of bombs today killed dozens of innocent, possibly Muslim-supporting, Brits might seem to have little to do with testosterone, but in fact, as in many other human disasters, chemistry played a major role in this.

Bombing innocents, blowing their bodies off, blasting means of transports in a capital, is profoundly illogical. That is, illogical for those endowed with a brain. This means that the majority of people out there is cut off already. Especially men. Men don't have brains, they have penises, unless they are very, very lucky.
What does killing accomplish? There are 10 million people living in London. They are probably scared today, many of them are pondering revenge against the Muslims. Because they are certainly taking for granted it's been the Muslims (unless someone wondered if it was Chirac protesting for the Olympics). Somewhere, some (male) person is watching the news and feels gratified for the scenes of horror and fear that are being broadcast. Then, maybe the next day, the Brits will bomb another village in Iraq. Bomb here, bomb there, kill this, kill that. Nobody sees that the problem is rooted elsewhere.
Let's be frank: men are bastards. Some of them are filthy rich bastards and most are filthy poor bastards. The filthy rich bastards (usually in charge of multinational companies based in the USA) like to exploit and wreck the filthy poor bastards. The filthy poor bastards would just like to switch roles with the filthy rich bastards. And so on, forever, in an endless cycle of exchanged stupidity and irrationality.
There is one word to describe the filthy rich and the filthy poor bastards alike: dickheads.

It's not just profanity. It's what they are: people whose dick replaces their head.

In my ideal world (and I live off ideals) the United Nations is a supernational government in charge of every nation in the world. People are free to do what they wish with their life (including having sex on the street, drink alcohol at the age of 4, marry their gay lover, adopt 200 lesbian daughters, smoke joints, and revere freedom). Wealth is distributed reasonably equally (that is, pretty much everyone has what he needs to survive decently and nobody really has too much). Religions are abolished and humans are fully rational and peaceful.
It's my ideal perfect world. Of course, it's impossibly done, but it's not THAT FAR from the Netherlands. The Dutch are the best people in the world and they don't even know it. Their prince is gay and they didn't even notice it.
I love the Dutch. Really. I wish I had a Dutch girlfriend.

Why isn't the world really like the Netherlands? Mostly because of men and their testosterone.

Men and women tend to be different in at least one important characteristic.
Have you ever tried putting a large number of women together? It doesn't take long before they start scratching at each other and bite. Each woman, deep within herself, wants to be the only one. Somehow, women seem to be self-centered, obsessed with other women, disappointed to share the world with others. A woman is the center of her own world, and another woman is a potential enemy. Nobody can hate women more than women themselves.
The way women hate each other is subtle. They steal each other's boyfriends, they make nasty jokes to humiliate their peers, they are able to hold a grudge for an entire lifetime.
Men are not like that.
Put a large number of men together and they will look for a leader. Men are basically pack animals. They move in packs, act in packs, and follow their leaders. Being the leader is everything. Men want to be the one that leads all the others. Napoleon Bonaparte, Julius Ceasar, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, they led. The others followed. Men revere blunt, selfish behaviors. Men fight each other and test their muscles. They respect the strongest man in the pack. They accept whatever the leader says and are ready to kill in the name of the leader. They are able to kill people they don't hate only because the leader told them to do so. Men are pack animals.
But how do they choose who the leader is? Led by their testosterone, they search for the most masculine traits. The biggest, toughest, most brutish ape is the leader. And who is the most brutish ape? the only ape that can challenge and beat the old leader. Men are apes. They are pack apes. Gorillas and chimps have the same obsession for leadership.
Men like to show off their power because it proves they are the leader.
There is one thing women will never really understand: a man doesn't want the most beautiful, sexiest girl for themselves because she's special. They want her to show other men they are better than them. A man will feel inferior if his girlfriend is uglier than another man's.
A man doesn't want to be rich. A man wants to be RICHER than his peers.
A man wants to be TOUGHER than the others
A man wants to be more ruthless, more daring, more dangerous, more blunt, more offensive, more evil, more selfish, more brutish than other men so they will revere him and adore him, and they will follow him, and he will be they leader and they will be the pathetic zombies to dispose with.
Echoes of this manly attitude are everywhere in man's history, and male philosophy (think of Nietzsche's superman). Nazi hyerarchs were doing nothing but responding to their most natural masculine instincts when they persecuted the Jews, the untermenschen, the "under-men". Men are naturally Nazi. There is nothing more natural for a man than being a filthy Nazi bastard, obeying the filthy Nazi Adolf Hitler and persecute the Jews. Nazi is male. For a man, Nazi is good. Nazi is heaven. Nazi is the ultimate paradise, the reason to live, the essence of life.
That is, for a man led only by his lowest instincts. Men led by testosterone.
Men do not know that their pursuit for power, wealth, women and the likes are actually induced by the amount of testosterone in their blood.
Still, if you ever go to male's public lavatory, you will see how men peek at each other's penises while they pee. It's because they can't help it. The ultimate manliness is the size of their penis. Girls don't give a damn about the size of penises. A girl can be contented with any size. It's men. They are obsessed with it. Because in the end, the apish side of man knows that the larger the penis, the manlier the man. Men are obsessed with the fear of finding someone with a larger penis because in the end, whatever they do, he will be the leader. Some monkeys choose their alpha male just by watching each other's penises. Men do the same.
That's why men are so intolerant of being insulted for their penis' size. It's where their manliness resides, their leadership, their power, their feeling of superiority.
Women can't understand that (luckily) because they don't have a penis.
In the end, all the evils of the world, all the injustices, the inequalities, the lack of democracy, the persecution of women, originate from the obsession men have for the size of other men's penises.
Once a man rationalizes that being a leader is basically testosterone-induced bullshit, he becomes free.
When someone honks at me on the highway and zips away surpassing me at 200 kmh while I obstinately stick to the speed limit, I know he's just trying to tell me his penis is larger than mine. That's really the whole point. He's showing me he's the leader. And if I were like other men and I let my testosterone led my mind, I would accelerate and zap past that man to show him that, damn it, MY penis is at least seven inches longer than his. Luckily, knowing that it's all testosterone, I don't give a damn. In fact, I don't care about other men's penises, because I am not looking for a leader. I am not a pack animal.
The American Republicans are so obsessed with their penises that they are beyond the very concept of gay. Have you noticed how right-wing men revere muscled soldiers? Ever seen pictures of Fascist Youth or Nazi Supermen? Large, muscular, blunt: precisely what men like. Men like men, they are gay. Republicans in particular, they are tremendously gay. They love muscular men and keep their wives home cooking food and making babies.
It is known that gays have a larger amount of testosterone in their blood than the average man. Surprised? I am not. Soldier loving Reps are gays, just they don't know it. They love their leader. If they were free of their social restraints, in the woods, they would pay respect to their leader by letting him introduce his vast, immense penis into their tight asses.
Isn't that the meaning of showing their middle finger after all?
I wish girls understood this simple thing. Of course, the standard girl is attracted by the leader guy, the one that is most manly. In the eyes of other men, the one with the largest penis.

Luckily not all men are gay and obsessed with penises. Usually, scholarized left-wing intellectuals free themselves of the slavery of testosterone and penis size. You can recognize these men easily: they don't give a damn about the size of their penis. They don't try to drive at 350 kmh. They don't want the most beautiful girl around to show her off to other men. They don't love leadership. Very often they are Communist or Socialist.
Some societies are led by women. One of them is Sweden (where 66% of the Parliament is occupied by female politicians). Another is Holland (the Queen is a woman). These societies tend, in general, to be socialist. England being a notable exception. England is always an exception, but they don't really count. They are different. And I like them, the Brits I mean. The Scots, more, and the Irish a lot, but those islands are inhabited by cool people. Even when their female leader is a crazy liberist called Margaret Thatcher. Going to war with Argentina for some rocks in the Atlantic. Very manly: to show that the size of British penises is way beyond the comprehension of Argentinian people.

Being rational means to understand you are led by the size of your penis, you are obsessed by it, and you realize you hate being led by it.

I am so wary of letting testosterone lead my life that some friends of mine call me a lesbian. Because how can I be a man when I don't show a hint of natural manly behavior? Well, perhaps I am not a lesbian (sadly) but I think I can agree with those that call me androgynous.
It's because I don't act upon the biddings of testosterone. When men stop letting testosterone drive their actions, they become androgynous in the eyes of others.

So what's this London bombings about after all? Behind all the hatred, all the injustices, all the religious zeal and whatnot, there's just one thing. Some people really want to tell the Brits: "Look, our penises are larger than yours". Just what they tried to tell the Americans when they toppled the Twin Towers. Just what the Americans tried to answer when they toppled everything standing in Iraq.

If only you knew how I hate men and their dicks.

In my ideal world men are androgynous, women are strong and emancipated, and penises are inside panties. They are used to pee and to please women. And this ideal world cannot be achieved in my lifetime, because men have penises that don't want to stay inside panties.
Because they want to be the largest.

We live in a penis-led world where only a few islands of peace can be found, wherever men have been overruled by women.

Hail to the Penis, the great mastermind, the leader of all men.

Post Number Thirty-One: Sarong Party Frenzy

2005-07-06T18:14:00.000+02:00

Of a Singaporean female

Let's be frank. I can't keep out of other countries' business. It's probably because Italy is such a devastating mess, such a disappointment, that I prefer to look elsewhere. Or maybe because I have friends across the planet worldwide, I don't see them as foreigners but just as people, and what happens in their lands somehow has to affect me too. Or maybe because I am curious and need to know things others don't mind about. Or all these things together.

It's not really important. While reading my friend Viv's blog, I encountered her musings on a certain "Sarong Party Girl" I had never heard about. I didn't really care too much about it at the beginning, but then I realized this Sarong Party person was a big thing in Singapore, so I just had to know what the fuss was all about.

Apparently, "Sarong Party Girl" is a Singapore-born young girl (presumably in her late teens), who likes to talk about sexual topics and post pictures of her naked body on her blog.
I paid a visit to this blog to read what she was talking about. I didn't look at the pictures, whether you believe it or not. I have seen many naked girls already, in pictures and in reality, and no, however young and exotic (for a European), peeking at another one is not going to excite me enough for me to bother. I was much more interested in knowing what she was talking about. As it seems to me after reading few paragraphs at random, this girl is definitely emancipated, and this is probably why there's so much fuss about her.

Ok, from my own point of view, girls are free to do as they like with their body. If they wish to post naked pictures of themselves they are most welcome to do so. Not that I care to watch them, but if it makes them feel better, I am not going to stop them. Anyway, I am pretty sure that the fuss is more about the topics she talks about than the pictures. And the way she discusses about sexual matters made me think she's quite intelligent, actually mature.
It also made me understand, incidentally, that Singapore is very much like Italy: proud and quick to condemn girls as soon as they are emancipated.
Really sad. I find it even easier now, to understand why Vivien (my friend in South East Asia) feels the need to come to Europe every now and then. I would feel castrated in a society that finds so much interest in insulting an emancipated girl for her courage to speek tongue-in-cheek.
Probably, Singapore is, like Italy, sexually frustrated. The whole country, I mean. Italians are very sexually frustrated. They are so frustrated that most Italian men are actually gay and they don't even realize it. You understand a man is a frustrated gay when he is particularly intolerant against gays and likes anorexic girls with undefined curves. Italian girls tend to the "Velina" model. It is impossible to explain to foreigners what a Velina is. It must suffice to say that a "Velina" is a young, smiling, very slim girl whose only desire is to dance and pride herself of her own lack of culture (=brain). Girls like this represent the typical model of the typical Italian girl (that is not to say all Italian girls are like that, of course, but a great number wishes to become like that). Girls like this also represent the frustration of the feminine gender. I find them revolting.
Guys who like girls like that are brainless zombies divided in two categories:
- gay zombie
and
- etherosexual zombie
The first of course includes all those Italians who are gay but do not accept this fact. Declared gays are not included.
The second group includes what little remains.
Zombies of both categories lurk in Italian cities with only one thing in mind: sex and related topics. They are produced in great numbers in countries where the majority of girls are irrationally ashamed of sex, their naked body, and such. Italy is such a country.
I am beginning to believe Singapore is another such country.
Sweden is not such a country. In Sweden, nakedness, sex, sexual topics and such are usually considered normal. They are part of the normal essence of their society. In saunas, men and women enjoy the heat together completely naked. It is my intention to show Vivien when she comes to Malmoe, that most people go to swim naked, in perfectly public areas with no way to conceal themselves. Because, in fact, they never thought of a reason to conceal themselves. What's wrong with naked bodies?
In Sweden, no one would notice Sarong Party Girl. All girls talk about sex. Ok, it is TRUE that Sarong Party Girl talks about sex with wit and maturity. She's smart, no doubt. Most people in the world are not smart, regardless of where they are born.
In Italy, Sarong Party Girl can't really exist. But then again, it couldn't exist in Singapore as well so I presume that somehow, some day, we will have an Italian Sarong Party Girl and I will welcome her with joy. Unlikely to happen soon because Italian girls are not simply sexually chastized by the state but, more fiercely, by their obscene, medieval, repulsive religion, the evil, diabolic Catholicism.
At least Singapore is not Catholic.
Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, here's the thing.
I see no reason to talk that much about Sarong Party Girl. She's just a normal girl talking about things that every normal girl should talk about. Sex, politics, drugs, emancipation, the length of dicks and whatnot, what's the problem? They are topics. There are no forbidden topics. Nothing disconcerting, nothing to be ashamed of. I often think about the concept of shame, and I have come to believe it's idiotic. Really.
Most people would be disappointed to see, say, two naked lesbians indulging in sado-masochist practices in a public place.
Well, have you ever really wondered, rationally, WHY so?
Is there any RATIONALE behind shame? I can't find any. We have been told certain things are not to be done in public. Well, why? In which way are they going to physically affect me?
In the happiest country of the world (the Netherlands), prostitution is legal. Nobody screams and shouts at infamy because their oh-so-pure infants saw a naked prostitute behind a shop window. What's so infamous with a naked woman? Don't those oh-so-pure infants see the breasts of their own mother every time they need to feed?
What's this fuss about sex? In most societies (unaffected by the ever-diabolic evil of the Christian Church) sex is made in public, discussed in public, publicly performed in rites.
During the celebrations dedicated to the goddess of Spring, in ancient Rome, dozens of girls had sex in the streets of the capital to lose their virginity on the day dedicated to the deity. Why are we so stupidly, inanely ashamed and irritated by sex?
Why are we drooling like imbecile dogs just because a Singaporean girl has published naked pictures of herself? Are we (men) ever going to wake up from this general stupidity.
I actually applaud the courage of Sarong Party Girl. She challenged the customs of her own society, which is never easily done and often a reason to be chastized by people that think they know everything about right and wrong.
I just wish a girl could post naked pictures of herself in peace. And talk about whatever amount of sex and related topics she feels like talking about.
Personally, I have nothing else to say about this, so I won't mention Sarong Party Girl(s) again in the future.

Enjoy and live your life, people. And reconsider shame.

Post Number Thirty: We, The People

2005-07-04T19:38:00.000+02:00

Of why I celebrate the Fourth of July (in my own way)

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [...] That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government [...]"

Today is the Fourth of July, 2005 AD. The Fourth of July, 1776 AD, fifty-six men reunited in what became known as the Hall of Independence in Philadelphia, PA, signed a chart that changed the course of history and politics.
Among these men, particularly notable were Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Hancock. Franklin, in particular, was a scientist. Jefferson, a biologist and philosopher. All of them were sons of an era that we, as human beings, should be grateful to.
The era was that of Enlightment.
The Enlightment is also known as the age of Reason. The laymen of course were not particularly versatile in reasoning (they never were and they will never be in the course of history). Those who were remarkably Reasoning were the philosophers. Where were they coming from?
History is grounded upon history of course. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe was precipitated in the Dark Ages, and it took the continent 1000 years to finally emerge from its stagnation, mostly thanks to the contribution of the Arabs. As Europeans attempted to re-discover civilization, the ever-opposing force of the Catholic Church, afraid of losing its power and its wealth, increased its pressure over the population, creating institutions such us the Inquisition to condemn those who sought freedom of thought. Then, in the middle of the 1700's, thanks to a revolution started by the scientific discoveries of the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century, philosophers, in particular French philosophers, began to Reason.
They actually began to use their rationality to analize things, giving birth to modern Europe and its revolutionary civilization.
In an era when people had the guts to fight for their ideals and turn them into practice, a number of wise and intelligent men living in the English colonies overseas, deeply influenced by the theories of French masterminds like Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau, revolted against the British motherland.
Just think of it, in our cynical, depressed, inertial world. Think to a group of poorly armed idealists that embraced their muskets and dared challenge the greatest Empire of the world. Think of how desperate their effort was. Think of how small the chances to win. In the likeliest outcome, Benjamin Frankling, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, George Washington, would be hung for treason.
I always feel a thrill of pride, of admiration, of sincere awe, when poorly armed people, the Weak, dare challenge the Strong, the Empire. Isn't it like Luke Skywalker battling the Death Star? Isn't it like little Frodo struggling to destroy the Ring against all hopes? The Weak, driven to despair, have nothing to lose and become daring. They dare.
They were inspired by beliefs that 50 years ago were unconceivable: that men are "equal" (equal? When the Church spent so much time explaining they are NOT equal, that some are good and some are evil and some will go to Heaven and some will not, and that the Pope and the King have much more rights than the laymen?)
That men have the right to liberty? Liberty? The RIGHT to LIBERTY? In an era when Kings put people in jail for the simple pleasure of doing so? the Right to Life?
Do you realize how revolutionary, how incredibly daring these words are? What kind of demotion of the established governments they would imply, were they to be taken seriously?
Fighting for ideas like this in the 1700's is not simple bravery. It is awesome. It is an example for all the people of all ages, especially for those that never dared challenge the established beliefs.
Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. And Jefferson, Franklin, Adams.
They challenged the Empire. They fought the immense forces of the Brits. They sought and found help in the French people, to whom so much they owed.
They fought, and against all odds, they won.
The idealists, the people that dared upturn the rules of what so far was the only possible concept of civilization had it their way.
In Congress united, the People of what became known as The United States of America declared their Independence by signing a chart, on the 4th of July 1776. A chart that stated the right to upturn governments. The right for the governed to decide who's in charge and whether it's for the good of the people or not.
The right for the governed to revolt against the government, to upturn it.
The right to Revolution.

The American Revolution is not just an American thing. The American Revolution is the first, awesome manifestation of what Reason can accomplish if only people dare to trust it. It is a proof that ideals can be put into practice, that they can become the foundation of a new course of history. The American Revolution is a beacon for all those that believe in Reason.

It didn't take long before the French companions of the newly created American people started their own Revolution. It must not be forgotten that Thomas Jefferson contributed to the Declaration of the Rights of Man signed in Paris after the French abolished Monarchy.
The World was about to change. Western civilization was about to change.
We recently signed a 500-page "European Constitution", most of which has to be changed and was rejected for its lack of attention on Welfare, but in the part we should be proud of, it is stated that Europe grounds its history and philosophy on The Greek/Roman Antiquity and The Enlightment. The two, greatest moments of glory of this continent, when Religion didn't cast its obscure darkness on the mind of people. When superstition was fought by our greatest minds. When Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire lived and changed history.
When the culture of Europe led the greatest minds of the United States to challenge the Empire and win. To sign one of the greatest, most daring documents of the world's history.
The Declaration of Independence.

This is why, even today, when the USA have turned into a shadow of what they were meant to become, when cynical people forget the importance of fighting for the ideals, for Reason, when bald dictators try to topple the very foundations of European democracy, when everything seems to be precipitating in a turmoil of Darkness, of Superstition, of Despair and Obscurantism, still, I dare recalling the 4th of July 1776. Because if we, the People of this Western Civilization of ours, managed to challenge the establishment once, and again, we can't be doomed. We will rise again, when the time comes, for the next revolution. Because Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire and Jefferson were human beings like us, who lived in a dark age like we do today, and still they dared. Still they lived. Still they fought. Still they signed the Declaration and the Rights of Man.

The American Revolution, as much as the French Revolution, make me proud of being human. I am thrilled by the words signed in the Chart:

The Triumph of Reason.

Post Number Twenty-Nine: Bloody Hot

2005-06-27T19:08:00.001+02:00

Of the Bloody Hot summer in Bloody Polluted Milan

It's summer. Officially so. If it were just a matter of season names, I wouldn't complain, but it's also a matter of heat. It's torrid, humid, hot and outrageously sunny. It's 32 degrees out there. For those of my readers that aren't familiar with Celsius degrees, 32°C equals to roughly 90F. Ok, 90 might seem a lot but not that much. After all, there are places where temperatures range in the 100's. Well, if you believe so, you should come to Milan in this season. It's not only 32°C or 90F as you prefer. It's also 90% humid. It's also still: no wind, no breeze, not a leaf moves. It's polluted. So polluted that the sky doesn't look blue but gray, with a hint of brown. Add that there is no sea, no lakes, no rivers. No water, in fact (agriculture is in crisis already). It's crowded with bloodthirsty mosquitoes (whose bites I am allergic to) that mistook my arms and any other visible part of my body for an airport. And, if you think that after all this is not so different from NYC in August, just add that we don't have air conditioning. The thermometer in my bedroom indicates a bloody 33 degrees in this moment. All I have is a fan, and it does little more than blow hot air against me. Luckily, I have air conditioning in the office. It pays to have a job sometimes. Not only in the literal sense, I mean.
Look: I hate the summer. I hate long, sunny, hot days when night comes too late and lasts too little, I hate to wear as little as decency allows me to and still feel so hot that I wish I could tear my skin off and let my bones refresh (because, as everyone around me knows very well, I am a skeleton covered by an extremely thin film of extremely white skin - other fanciful addenda like "muscles", "tendons" and such do not seem to belong to my genetic pool). On my right arm, a damn mosquito has left two different marks: one is approximately 7 centimeters wide (or 3 inches). The other instead is growing as a protuberance of scary size. This, because I am allergic to their bites. In fact, I hate mosquitoes hardcore. To hell with biodiversity! I once read a book written by a Nobel Prize that happens to be clearly insane, he was protesting a race of spiders insisting that eight legs and six eyes are too much of both. Well, I tell you, six legs, two eyes and a bloody sting to suck your blood off your veins is too much already. I would be extremely happy to squeeze the last mosquito and bring their useless species to extinction. Unluckily I was told there are hundreds of billion mosquitoes in the world and I tend to get tired very quickly during the summer. I would probably give up after killing the first two or three billion.
When I try to imagine the worst feelings of the world, they all begin with a sunny summer day. I am slightly photophobic. For those who never heard this word, it means that my eyes are slightly over-sensitive to light. Direct, intense sunlight makes my eyes burn and cause the explosion of capillars that make me look like a frenzied vampire. Not that I have anything against vampires. In fact, I love vampires. Vampires are gorgeous: only thing is that I am not one. I just look like one, which scares the wits off most the people I meet without giving me the pleasure of sucking them dry.
I am not particularly fat. In fact, my weight is appropriate for a girl my age and my height. That means, a normal girl, not one of those revolting anoxeric skeletons that surround me in this country. In fact, girls I am attracted to tend to be athletic, with nicely shaped biceps and shoulders, straight backs, fit legs and generally toned body: a-la Jennifer Lopez. Precisely the contrary of the generally appreciated type in this bloody hot country. I like self-sufficient, independent, intelligent, witty women with a taste for their good health and no need for a man at their side. I like them self-confident, courageous, strongly feminist and emancipated. I love them talking face to face to men as equals, proud of their selves, uninterested in gossiping about other girls and much less men. I like girls with guts.
Italians, instead, like Adriana Lima.
Adriana Lima makes me vomit. I hate her. I hate her stupid face. I hate her stupid TELECOM ads (I also hate TELECOM but that's another story). I hate how she looks like a sulky teen. I hate her poorly trained body, I hate the pictures they portray of her. I find her utterly annoying, disgusting, revolting, whenever I see her on TV (and it happens often) I feel the urge to zap to another channel. It's the same urge I feel when I see the face of the Pope. It's not just her. By the way, I don't know her. I only know her body and how ads portray her, and this is what makes me puke. Perhaps she's an intelligent girl (I seriously, SERIOUSLY doubt an intelligent girl would sell her body like that, but then again, who knows?). I hate that girls plan their aspirations on the revolting model of Adriana Lima. Sometimes I wish the Telecom ads showed a more athletic woman (Jennifer Lopez?) meeting men in a bar and blasting their balls off with Kalashnikovs or Uzis. A bit gory but I would have a damn lot of fun watching it.
Whatever.
I will close this post because it leads me only to feel worse. Not only I am hot but now I am thinking to that horrendous creature Adriana. I'd better go watch Kill Bill. I need blood now.

Sayonara, amigos.

Post Number Twenty-Eight: The Day of Infamy

2005-06-15T18:14:00.000+02:00

Of the disgrace that fell upon Italy and of the petty powers that rejoice for it.

American citizens and a significant number of human beings worldwide alike, remember with a mix of sadness, disconcert, fear and downright pain, the day when President Roosevelt, in front of the Congress reunited, declared the 7th of January, 1941 the "Day of Infamy".
In those days, the word Infamy was designated to indicate treacherous attacks from foreign forces. Nowadays, Infamy acquires a new meaning, one that goes far beyond the effects of a World War, one that puts at the stakes the very future of the women who have, or will have, the disgrace of being born in the speck of land called "Italian Republic". A small boot-shaped country that extends across the Mediterranean and that, geographically speaking, belongs to the European continent, although its culture shares little to nothing of the enlightment of its European cousins, vehemently suggesting that this small nation, usually known as "Italy", has become a stranger in its own continent; Italy, like a shipwreck, has sunk deep into a black hole of folly, obscurantism and mysoginy, fueled by the hatred embodied by an organized society of gangsters.
These gangsters, these criminals, these mysoginists, have names and surnames, and shall be revealed further on in this mail. But since first things must still come first, even in the barbarian, uncivilized lands of Italy, I will report the facts now, so that readers will know what I am talking about.

It is very hard to choose a starting point. The disgrace I am addressing now is the result of years of criminal subtleties and cruelties, performed by a number of agents that belong to several gangs (some of them disguised as political parties). A significant few of the actors of this bad drama are now (with my greatest relief) dead, but others have taken their place, carrying on the same misdeeds, all intended to one purpose only: negate the Italian people its right to be civilized, its right to be European.
I could very well begin from the year 1974, when I was born. In those days, Italy was a civilized nation, and the gangsters did not disguise themselves but acted as their name suggests: openly shooting and bombing public places to kill as many innocents as possible. These gangsters were usually right-wing agents acting upon the biddings of the right-wing government to scare the people and induce them to abandon every hope of changing the nation's histerical laws. Nonetheless, a law was proposed to legalize divorce (which wasn't legal in the country before) and, when asked to vote, to express their opinion about this law, millions and millions of Italians rushed to the booths to vote for legalized divorce. Then, in 1980, the same millions and millions of my fellow citizens, in the name of civilization and the rights of women, struck another blow against the millenary obscurantism of the nation voting for the legalization of abortion.
Those were the days, when one could be proud of being Italian. Being Italian meant to have the guts to challenge the establishment, to fight for women, to protect the rights of women against the criminal assaults of the most evil, diabolic gang ever created by human beings: the perverted Catholic church. Nowhere in the world there exists a more obscurantist, a more fanatic, a more narrow-sighted and narrow-minded gang of self-appointed religious clerics, than the diabolic Catholic church. Not even the most perverted, drugged, insane televangelists of some remote location of the fly-over zone of the USA can hope to be vaguely dangerous as the Catholic church. They are evil incarnated, an organization bent to one purpose only: to crush humanity under the weight of their diabolic credo, inspired by hatred and a determination to abolish free will.
Hatred is the key to understand the Catholic church, its fiendish agents and demons, for their insane, unspeakable, neverending hatred against women, which they deem responsible for all the sins of the world, mounted to unbearable levels when Italian women voted to legalize abortion. They swore to make them pay, and being a millenary institution, they had no fear to wait for the right moment to strike back. Like a vile viper lurking under the shadows of a hidden crack, the Catholic gangsters led by their boss, the Torquemada-esque Cardinal Camillo Ruini, waited for the right moment to exact their revenge against women, and the right moment came at last.

At the beginning of the new millennium, Italy forwent its previous democracy in exchange for dictatorship. The self appointed dictator of Italy, the bald dwarf known as Silvio Berlusconi, organized a peculiar sort of coup-d'etat based not on military occupation but on brainwashing through the immense power granted him by his the owner of each and every mass media of the country. After enslaving the population to banality and stupidity, after taking control of all the broadcasting companies, the banks, the magazines, the insurance companies, and so on... and after unprecedented attacks against the few judges that didn't swear obedience to his whims, Berlusconi took the power, taking with him his coalition formed by the following parties:
1. The Fascist Party (yes, Mussolini), disguised by its new denomination "National Alliance"
2. The Northern League, a Nazi-friendly party which started off as a secessionist group, further degenerating in mere racism and anti-European propaganda
3. The Christian Democratic Union, a group of Catholic ayatollahs that originate from a fanatist Papist group called "Communion and Liberation", whose only purpose is to impose the law of the Bible to Italy
In order to remain undisputed dictator of the country, the bald dwarf Berlusconi needed to comply to the various requests of its greedy allies, creating laws that would please each of them. So, Berlusconi abandoned Europe and married the anti-European propaganda of the Northern League, promoting its barbarian drift (among other things, Northern League members hallucinate about their being Celts, sometimes even Vikings, though they don't seem to know the difference). Berlusconi sold our ministry of foreign affairs to the Fascist Party secretary, in exchange for another ministry sold to the Northern League (although technically allied, the Fascist Party is critically opposed to the Northern League, mainly because the Fascists uphold the superiority of the Aryan Italian Race, while Northern League fanatists claim their belonging to the Master Aryan Celt Race, which they deem superior to the African Italian Race).
But the greatest disgrace for the country was the selling of our laws to the demons of Christian Democracy. The criminals were controlled by the ever-present Ayatollah Camillo Ruini, the contorted, twisted-minded, corrupted, diabolic REAL ruler of the Catholic Church: the man whose obscure designs and manuevers led to the election of Adolf Hitler Ratzinger as Pope Benedict. The viper knew it was its time to bite, and it bit, spitting its venom into the veins of the once civilized Italy. To please their leader, the Christian party members promoted and forced to sign an infamous law, known as "Law 40".

Law 40, which deals with artificial insemination, simply put, is the revenge against women that the evil Cardinal Ayatollah Ruini was awaiting. He savored this moment for years, and at last he had what he wanted on a silver plate.
The details of this insane, Torquemada-esque law, are here detailed in brief:

1. Artificial insemination cannot be practiced upon any living being excluding sterile married couples
2. Artificial insemination must not be chosen by a doctor, regardless of his professional opinion about it, if he hasn't tried already any other therapy, again regardless of its possible cons in the specific case
3. The doctor that finally chooses, upon proving all other therapies uneffective, the artificial insemination, cannot create more than three embryos with this technique
4. The three embryos must be ALL injected in the uterus of the mother. This is not kidding. ALL THREE EMBRYOS must be injected AT THE SAME TIME in the uterus of the mother. This, because:
5. It is forbidden to freeze embryos created via artificial insemination
6. The mother cannot revoke her consensus to have the embryos injected in her uterus in any case. Once the therapy is chosen, a woman must complete its cycle
7. The mother does not have the right to know whether one or more of the embryos carry genetical disease. In any case, genetically diseased or altered embryos MUST NOT BE DISCARDED, but NONETHELESS IMPLANTED in the uterus of the mother.
8. Research on embryos, aimed to find treatments for incurable diseases such Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and such, is forbidden. Creation of embryos for this purpose is as well forbidden.
9. Embryos are granted the state of citizen of the country, therefore sharing the same rights of the mother from the very moment they egg is fertilized
10. The artificial insemination can only be performed using sperm cells and eggs of the married couple. Sperm cell and/or egg donation is expressely forbidden.

Any human being who doesn't live in the Middle Ages will see by himself (I prefer to say, by herself), that this is not a law: this is a revenge against women. This is an outrage, a diabolic plan to deprive women of the status of human being. Three embryos implanted at the same time? No chance to discard genetically altered embryos? An obligation to carry on the pregnancy of a diseased embryo without even knowing it? How can this be a law? How can this law be signed and included in the agenda of a European country? How can Italy still call itself part of Europe? The Northern League promises riots to oppose the inclusion of Turkey in the European Union. I wonder why Turkey doesn't oppose the inclusion of Italy in a civilized union that includes their millenary civilization. This law 40 is not a law, it's an act of pure hatred: the hatred of the evil mastermind that conceived it, that is the vile viper Ruini, who then passed it on to its political agents in the Parliament to promote it and bestow it upon women.

The democratic forces of this country, which still exist, in a disorderly aggregated coalition, promoted a referendum to abolish this law. It was the occasion for democracy to strike back at the infamy. Those who wanted to keep the law as such would simply have to vote "NO". Those who wanted to change this law, must vote "YES". That easy

But Cardinal Ruini knew he had another bullet in his gun. For a referendum to be valid, at least 50% + 1 of the population must vote. In a now infamous public speech, aired by all the television companies of the bald dwarf, the dictator Berlusconi, Camillo Ruini did not invite his fanatic followers to vote "NO" in the referendum. He invited them to NOT VOTE.
He chose to exploit a technicality to bring the referendum to a failure.
A representative of the Vatican state told Italian citizens what to do of their law.

Tell me, my foreign and luckier friends, what would happen if Canadians told American what the have to vote for? What if the Vietnamese told Singaporese which laws they must pass? What if Namibia told South Africans which president they must elect? What if any leader of any foreign state would tell YOU what to do?
But Italy is no normal country. Italian politicians of the dictator's coalition greeted with joy the intrusion of the Cardinal Ruini in our national affairs. The highest personalities of the State, the Catholic fanatist President of the Chamber of Deputees joined Ruini telling my people that he, the second most important institution of the nation, was not going to vote. Berlusconi the dictator of course, didn't vote.
To no avail the leaders of democratic parties cried at the intrusion of a foreigner agent in our politics. They were accused and chastized, publicly, on Berlusconi's many TVs.
Cardinal Ruini knew how to play his cards. He created a committee called "Science a Life", truly a gang of fanatic Catholics that received enormous amounts of money from the bottomless chests of the Vatican's treasury to promote the NOT-VOTE policy.
Some of the sexiest women of the country, a number of renowned Nobels, personalities of the agonizing culture of this nation, all united to save the Referendum. They implored my fellow citizens to vote, to let women keep their rights they gained at the cost of much sufference. To let research further its effort to ease mankind from some of its direst genetical diseases.
At the same time, the diabolic Ruini used his puppet Adolf Hitler Ratzinger, to promote his own view. DON'T VOTE, he kept suggesting, whispering in every ear, poisoning the mind of millions.

What about the outcome of the Referendum?

Italians voted to erase this foolish Law 40 on the 12th and 13th of June (a date chosen by the government with a reason: Schools are already closed and most Italians are on holidays already, so they wouldn't come back home to vote).
Of the millions asked to vote for the rights of women, to protect the future of their wives, their girlfriends, and their daughters, only 20% obeyed and did their duty.

80% of the shameful mass of idiots that share this land with me, complied to the biddings of the Cardinal Ruini.

The law is now approved. Approved by the non-vote of the Italian people. Today, we are watching the day of infamy. The day when Italy forwent its civilization.
We look back to the Middle Ages, to the Inquisition, to the Catholic obscurantism, and we know it's now a lot closer to us. I am only glad for my sister, who will soon move to Sweden, and who uttered the following, sad statement:
"I wouldn't let my children be born in Italy. I don't want my children raised in this land. I am ashamed of Italy".

Those of us that know what future awaits women, which destiny Ruini has designed for them, can't but be ashamed of Italy. Shame on Italy. Shame on its people.

Shame on all of us.

Post Number Twenty-Seven: Night-time sharpens, heightens each sensation...

2005-05-07T00:41:00.000+02:00

It was a cold afternoon of January, on the second day the sun had shone upon the skyscrapers of Manhattan since the beginning of year 2000. I was there, leaving a small diner of Times Square in NYC, in the company of the loveliest lady on that side of the planet. As we walked past the crowd we approached the entrance of one of the cosiest theatres of Broadway, the Majestic, where we were going to make a dream come true: savor each note, each moment, each chord of the one Musical that more than any other seemed to attract me...

the Phantom of the Opera

She and I took our seats in the velvet coated chairs and soon after the lights faded the dream began.

The Phantom of the Opera left a never fading mark in my life, but even more, that evening of music was unforgettable for its unspeakable magic that echoes through the years, resounding with my mind each time the notes of a song from that musical are played.
Ever since I stepped out of the Majestic, with the notes of the Music of the Night still playing in my mind, I knew I was going to remember that evening ever after. Every bit of it: from the magnificiency of the theatre to the perfection of the actors' performance; from the sound of the Phantom's voice to the picture of the abandoned mask on the stage; from my friend's partially red-died hair to her lovely friendly warmth nearby.

At last they made a movie of the Phantom. I didn't go to the theatre to see it, because they had the distasteful idea of daring to dub the songs and sing in Italian, when the beauty of the English verses of that musical is unmatched. I patiently waited for the DVD to be published, which happened to be done yesterday in Italy... and at last, tonight I saw the Phantom of the Opera again, listened to its notes once more, let it carry me away along its gothic charm.
But together with voices and the music there came the memories, surfacing again, brought once more back to vivid life by the scenes and the songs. And as I pitied the unforgiving fate of the scarred Phantom, as I breathed at the sound of that music, I saw that evening again, and fondly recalled with sweet nostalgia the friendly warmth of that lovely lady and the unforgettable present she gave me: the evening at the theatre, watching the Phantom of the Opera.

That night lives within me like the spirit of the Phantom's music in Christine's soul.

Thank you, lovely lady, for giving me The Phantom of the Opera.

Post Number Twenty-Six: Flickorna

2005-05-04T18:40:00.000+02:00

Of girls

An evening in middle spring in Milan, Italy. My sister is downtown with her Swedish boyfriend, waiting to gather some Swedish friends coming over to stay with us for a few days. We love hosting people in our home. All these Swedes anyway remind me of Sweden, and I love Sweden. Anyway, I was reading my friend Viv's blog and among her posts which are usually tremendously witty, I found one referring to this other girl's blog, a certain Yvonne which I actually met last summer, in Sweden. I recall her very well - not very talkative, for the jet lag I presume - and I recall Valerie too. Valerie is my Chinese friend's sister. Never met Valerie or Yvonne before, but I am glad I had a chance to be introduced to them both.
I felt the inexplicable urge to peek through Yvonne's blog pages. Ok, it's one of those traditional blogs with diary entries and pictures. Not my idea of blog after all, but that should be quite evident by now, judging from what I have written here. Anyway, I found entries about Sweden and I flew to them like a fly to honey. I was curious to know more of how she felt over there. There was nothing really unexpected, and I wasn't really surprised either. Incidentally I have been the first person she has met in Sweden and I did what little I could in a few days to help her out. Well probably not much because I was completely forgotten in her entries... but personally I'd be more disappointed by being forgotten by Valerie than Yvonne. Let's be frank: Ok, in my personal opinion this Yvonne girl is beautiful. Slender, athletic body, nice smile, and especially attractive long, silky brown hair. Quite a beauty. And that's pretty much all about her, for the little I know since we didn't really talk much. Not that I am just making comparisons but maybe Valerie doesn't have a long flowing silky mane, yet she's charming in a way Yvonne can't probably achieve, not even if she tried. I do miss Valerie you know? She was so lively, so nice to talk to, so... how can I say, since I know her so little?... so enthusiastic about things. And cute. Well, I suppose there's no reason why I should abstain from noting my friend's sister is cute. It's what she is.
I have pondered about this for a while and I have decided: I am not like other guys. Well, I also took a lame and idiotic test with little to no value at all, which described me as having a 73% feminine brain: that is consistent with what a number of my friends claim, that I am actually a lesbian cleverly disguised as a man. I suppose. Anyway, it seems that the way I am attracted to girls heavily differs from other men's equivalent. I have recently started to be even annoyed by pictures of naked, sylicone-enhanced, so-called beauties which I find absolutely vulgar, unnerving and ultimately boring. This is in contrast with the fact that (if you read my post a few weeks below) women are among my fixations. In fact I still insist that I am fixated with girls. I study their beauty continuously and look for a precise pattern that should be able to ultimately lead me to a profound understanding of what I like about them; my studies have led me to only one conclusion, at the moment, which is the following: there's no pattern.
For a reason or another, almost every woman I know is special in a way or another (Yvonne being, sadly, a noticeable exception - and I underline "sadly", because she's an exquisite beauty nonetheless). Some of them are a bit more special than others (ok, I won't give out names here, but there's an elite of five, maybe six girls I know of that I consider definitely more special than others, and at least three I wouldn't want to be parted from, although two of them are scattered at the opposite sides of the planet). But this of course transcends mere sexual attraction, which I consider a rather dull and raw form of appreciation of a female. Maybe I am becoming like certain elitists of the late eighteenth century that said and did things that few others would really care about. Besides, I have my own opinions about what is sexual and what is not. Say, a kiss (I mean a french) is not sexual, period. Besides I love kissing girls. But unluckily most girls think otherwise so I just comply to their beliefs. After all, I am famous for my self-control.
What I really don't like is guys. It's not that they aren't beautiful. Well, not exactly: they AREN'T beautiful, but a small number of efeminated guys could be considered relatively attractive, at least face-like. I find men's body basically repulsive. All those straight lines, those veins, that revolting hair, and that obscene thing hanging down there - that's gross. And even when their face is acceptably nice, they are still men. In other words, hopelessly limited. They have nothing of the wit and charm of women. Well some women too lack wit and charm, but I don't mind them, they are anyway rarer than uncharming and unwitty men.
Oh well, actually I am quite tired of speaking about girls and guys, I have something to attend to which requires my attention completely, so I will stop this rant here.

NOTE: Flickorna means girls in Swedish

Post Number Twenty-Five: Berlusconi's resignment

2005-04-22T18:40:00.000+02:00

Of the defeat of a loser

Follow this link to know the rest:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4465253.stm

I have nothing to add, apart from my appreciation.

Post Number Twenty-Four: Pope-a-doodle-doo

2005-04-20T16:33:00.000+02:00

Of the Pope(s)

I doubt someone didn't notice but in case one of my readers happens to have spent the past 30 days on the Moon or on Mars, John Paul II is dead. Let's be frank, I have already stated I considered him an old bastard. Or a young bastard when he wasn't old. I was anyway horrendously disgusted by the mediatic hysteria that surrounded this old man's death.

They want him a Saint now. Go ahead, I don't care, it's their crap, not mine. They are also going to grant him the honor of being remember by history as "John Paul, the Great". Great? Tsk...
Oh, well, the reason they are asking for him to be known as the Great is that they think he did a lot of things he never did at all, but anyway I am glad (surprised?) that our vain society has found at least one person to be remembered as the Great, someone that (although he didn't really deserve it) should be recorded by History, our greatest Teacher.

The old Pope is gone, and as usual the new one is made. Benedict XVI. At least this one has a decent Pope's name. I was really tired of John Pauls. Popes are supposed to be called Innocent, Pious, Paul, John, Benedict, Bonifacius... what's this double named crap? John Paul? Bah... Give me my sounding ancient names of Leo III and Bonifacius VIII.
Apart from the chosen name all the rest about this man is as annoying as it was with John Paul. Old, stubborn, medieval, dull, boring, and revoltingly conservative. Another enemy of all the things I hold dearest (freedom, independence, variety, multi-culturalism, cosmopolitism). I am going to hate Benedict not a jot less than John Paul. In fact, I heard his words the other day before they ordained him a Pope and I thought "If God exists this son of a bitch can't be a Pope". He's the new Pope. I wonder what this tells us about the existence of God.

Anyway there is little to wonder about Benedict XVI. He's the chosen man of the real controller of the Catholic Church. John Paul? Only a puppet, a pawn in the hands of a scheming mastermind, the overlord of Cardinals, the Gray Eminence behind all the subtleties of the Vatican. This person is the corrupted, evil, contorted fanatic known as Cardinal RUINI. Fear this name.

Don't worry, my dear Atheist, Agnostic and Free-thinking friends: Nothing has changed. We still have a mentally retarded Pope to hate, the Church will continue its process of dehumanization of the world and we won't feel the difference with John Paul. A Pope dies, a new one is made. And nothing changes. Ever.

Habemus Papam.

Post Number Twenty-Three: Requiem

2005-03-31T18:37:00.001+02:00

Of Terri again, and the Pope

Requiescant In Pace.
This is the primeval sentence that originated the omnipresent acronym R.I.P. Whether you translate it as "Rest In Peace", "Riposa In Pace" or in other languages, I prefer the Latin sentence. Listen to the sound of it. "Requiescant in Pace".
My very charming and smart Chinese friend has pointed out, quite wittily, that the reason why Terri's parents insisted to fight for her daughter could be connected to an emotional desire to keep their offspring alive. Personally I doubt it. Roman Catholics are usually very oblivious to emotions, at least fundamentalist Roman Catholics. They don't really love anyone or anything, and I do not think they really love their offsprings as well. I recall a Roman Catholic family of my knowledge that locked their daughter in their house when they had to go out to be sure she wouldn't be back late (not going out at all provides an absolute certainty that she won't be back late). She was 17 when this happened. This is not love, it is a mixture of insanity and fanatism, and usually they go side by side anyway. I might be wrong of course, but I perceive Terri's parents as more concerned with the principles of their Church than with their daughter's life. Beware: principles of their Church, not fear for God. If it were just fear, it would mean they are emotional enough to act out of it, which I don't think is the case. No, I think they were trying to prevent their daughter from doing something their Church wouldn't approve. They probably hate and feel genuine disgust for liberals. They think they are obscene and they just can't tolerate them. Hence, they wanted their daughter to obey the rules of their Church, no matter what.

Whatever their motives, one thing alone matters now: Terri is dead. Of starvation, which is truly barbarian, but she is dead. She is in peace. At last, she has left this world and the grotesque struggle between her parents and her husband. As far as she is concerned, she has achieved the best state she could hope for ever since she was struck by that heart attack. Requiescat in Pace.

Another person is suffering.

Last night, I have discovered that I am probably prevented from truly hating someone.

There is probably no one in the world, apart Silvio Berlusconi and perhaps George Bush Jr., for whom I feel more dislike than John Paul II. Yes, the Pope. In years, every day the news of this country spend (too many) words about something that old imbecile said about this or that, and in years every day I see this happening I change channel, or turn the volume off. I do not want to hear his bullshit because every time he lets air through his vocal chords I get closer to ulcer. There is not even one thing in his (way too long) leadership of the evil Church of Rome that he said and I approved. He is the antithesis of everything I deem right. He is the ultimate idiot that promotes unsafe sex in third world country, who tries to prevent freedom, who denies women of their equality with men and ultimately represents the evil, scheming nature of the most hipocritical church of the world: the Roman Catholic. I thought there was no limit to how much I could hate that old bastard. I was keeping a bottle of champagne in the fridge to open it the day he would die.
Last night the news, as usual, spoke about the Pope. I turned the volume off so I am glad I don't know what they said, but I raised my eyes to see if it was over and I saw this old wreck staring at the window.
It was not the usual arrogant imbecile dressed in white I am used to see on TV. That was an old man that opened his mouth to speak in vain, because he obviously couldn't. Someone nearby took the microphone away from his mouth. Oblivious to this move, the wrecked elder kept moving his mouth in the attempt to say something. A thousand people below in Saint Peter0s square cried fake tears and disgusted me hardcore, but I looked at the old wreck and felt something.
I frowned at him. He is still that old bastard that caused so much damage to my country and its politics, that pushed Italy backwards to the Middle Ages and made me mad every time he spoke. My sister nearby was uttering her disgust for him, protesting that she feels nothing for him, that he deserves that much and so on.
I just frowned. I didn't say a word, because there was nothing to say in fact. I felt something that I didn't expect. I was, in a certain sense, moved by this evil old man's pain. If I had been there next to him, I would probably have taken him away from the sight of those imbeciles in the square that were unable to understand the pain of this old wreck. They are there to celebrate the "personality", if they really cared about the man they wouldn't want to see him in this conditions, they would beg the evil priests around him to let him rest. If I could have said something to him, it would be "Come on, get some rest". I would not say that in any sympathetic tone, I would still frown, but I would be unable to withstand his pain.
I stared at his figure on TV, this trembling jaw trying to bless the crowd, and frowned without saying a word. Inside my heart I felt I couldn't really hate him in that moment. I just felt sorry for him. I wished I could help him. He is a man that I thought I hated hardcore, a man whose death I would celebrate drinking. Instead, I understand that I hate the evil he promotes, but not him. I don't think I can hate anyone. I am just too moved by the misery of the old man. It was much easier to despise him and his stupidity when he was healthy and able to hurt and damage the world, something he relentlessly did every moment he could. But now... now he's just an old, suffering person, and I am unable to carry on the grudge with him. I just frown at him, but in secret, within my heart, I now pity him, and wish EVEN HIM some mercy. Now I am hoping for him to die not because I want him to stop causing trouble, but because I want him to stop suffering. There is nothing pleasurable in seeing the old wreck in these conditions. There is no point in hating him anymore. Now I hate those that force him to the window, when he obviously should just rest and patiently wait for his heart to let the grip on life go.
John Paul. I have despised your words, your church and yourself every second of your evil life. I still despise your arrogant church and loathe your god. And now I feel pity for you. I wish you a serene death. And soon, because I can't stand how your merciless priests keep using your wrecked body to stir the crowd's fake tears. Requiesce in Pace, Iohannes Paule II. My grudge with you and your evil is over.

Now I know. I will never hate anyone.

Post Number Twenty-Two: Terri

2005-03-29T23:17:00.000+02:00

Of Terri Schiavo

It is not my habit to post about news. What we call news more often than not are completely irrelevant or of scarce importance. We can get very passionate at one case or another, but in a short time everything is over and few recall what happened one month ago. Only rarely, and I believe even more so in our day, news are truly historical. I suspect that even the 9/11 case is not really historical, no more than the Sarajevo murder at least. A casus belli is always less important than the real motives that hide behind a war, and the war against Iraq was conceived and planned by Republicans long, long before 2001.

Anyway there is a lot of fuzz around this case of Terri Schiavo. So much so that even if I consider it quite insignificant, I will spend a few words on it.

Terri Schiavo, for all those that in a month for now will have problems recalling this name, is an American woman who lives in Florida. In 1990, still in her late youth, she was struck by an heart attack, presumably caused by eating disorders. Due to various reasons, she did not fully recover from this strike. She now lives in what is called a vegetative state with no apparent chance to improve. She is kept alive by a feeding tube, but is unable to react to the surroundings due to massive brain damage.
Her husband, Michael Schiavo, insists that his wife wouldn't want to live in such conditions and therefore asked for the feeding tube to be removed.
Her parents believe that she could improve with the right treatment, and since they are both Catholic Roman believers they completely reject the idea of assisted suicide (not Euthanasia, this is really not a case of Euthanasia). They have appealed to many courts to obtain a verdict in their favor, but ever since the feeding tube was removed, 12 days ago, all verdicts have been the same: the feeding tube must not be reinserted.
Even the President of the USA and the Congress have been involved in this matter. George Bush Jr. signed a law that would "save Terri's life" in its intent, but failed anyway to do so. The Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, brother of the President, has tried to help Terri's parents but won't go beyond his powers.

So far these are the facts.

Now my opinions about them
1) It is absolutely a scandal that the President of the USA gets involved in familiar matters, but that's a scandal in line with the scandalous line of conduct of the decaying American democracy of the early 21st century so I am not very surprised
2) Personally I don't think it's all about love and life.

I think that probably Michael Schiavo loves his woman and because of his devotion to her, he feels compelled to help her put an end to her own life. It requires a great love and generosity to let someone you care so much about part from this world. After seeing Terri's picture on TV, and before knowing the details of the case, I instinctively felt a motion of compassion for this woman and wished they let her die in peace. Of course, my idea of compassion clashes with that of Roman Catholics. Roman Catholics care very little about pain as they do about life. They think that there is something "holy" with life because life is a "gift" from their god. Therefore only their god can decide when to take his gift back. Hence, if one is suffering or living in a vegetative state, that life must still be preserved no matter what. This is their opinion which I reject completely. Life is not holy. Life is beautiful, charming, fascinating: I don't even kill ants or other insects for the immense respect I have for the machinery of life. But when a body is wrecked to a level that questions the very desire of a person to live on, I think that life should be ended. We kill horses with broken legs for much less. Are we more compassionate towards horses than humans?
Let's not mention the hipocrisy of Republcans: they protest for Terri Schiavo's life but never raise a finger against death penalty. Terri's life must be protected and that of a hispanic immigrant from Mexico who was probably framed for a crime he never committed shouldn't? I don't reason like that. I am thoroughly against death penalty, but that's another matter. My opinion has to do with the concepts of Justice and State of Right, things that in America are often confused with Revenge. It would take us too far.

There is no way I can agree with Roman Catholics because there is no common ground. I don't believe in their God, and the existence of their God is critical for their morality (some of them even grasp the concept of "Christian Ethics", but only a few and generally not in the USA). There might be some occasional convergences on some issues, but this is not one of them. I am completely on Michael's side. Terri has the right to end her misery.

What troubles me is that, although I am instinctively and rationally on Michael's side, I can't help feeling a certain admiration for Terri's parents.
Let me elaborate briefly.
Terri's parents are Republicans, and what is probably worse, Roman Catholic. I find Roman Catholic beliefs evil to the core, gory, sadistic, immoral, inhumane. I believe they have no sense of compassion, they fear pleasure and chastize those who seek happiness in this world. I see their religion as castrating, irritating and offensive, not counting how it is invasive of other cultures, arrogant and superstitious. Their arrogance is so obvious that they call themselves "Catholic", a word that means "Universal". Not only their religion is so obnoxious to me and so unresonant with my inner self, but it has a well radicated tendency to impose its morals to others, whether they abide to it or not. If they played squeamish among themselves I would care very little about them, but they keep trying imposing their fanatism to others, which includes me. And I do not tolerate it. Personally I find Terri's parents egotistical and irrational, willing to prolong the useless sufference of their daughter not because they really believe she can improve (and I believe she can't) but because of their religion. They just can't tolerate that their daughter will be forced not to abide to their church's regulations. The Pope stated that people in vegetative state must be kept alive, and therefore they must. It's a matter of principle. Terri's parents, I am sure, would keep their daughter alive even if she had been torn all limbs off and her eyes plucked out. It doesn't really matter how much pain she undergoes, it's all about upholding the principles. It's their daughter and she must be a good Catholic.
They are so fixated, so determined to uphold their principles, that are willing to challenge even the President, even the very foundations of the country they live into. They don't revere Freedom and Democracy, the real Holy Grounds that allow them to profess their religion in what would otherwise be a strictly Protestant country. They don't give a shit if America becomes a fundamentalist country like certain Middle East dictatorships as long as it abides to THEIR religion. They just want to uphold their damn principle.
AND DAMN they ARE upholding it!
They have incomodated the dumb President of the USA and not only its dumber brother. They have called upon the Congress and the Supreme Court, they have fought this battle relentlessly, in an epic struggle of unbelievable proportions. In this sense, I have a certain admiration for them. Their beliefs are fucked up, but they have the guts to stand for them. People like that have only one fault: they are on the wrong side.
If I were engaged in a battle of principles, I think I would probably be as stubborn as them. Probably I wouldn't let my emotions influence my actions. Perhaps I would even ignore certain facts once I knew what to do. In a way, sometimes I think I understand those fanatics and fundamentalists because in a certain sense, I am similar to them. I could be equally fanatic and fundamentalist in the struggle to uphold the principle of Freedom and Equality. Perhaps not equally fanatic, in fact, but I would like to. Principles are paramount.

One final note. I am favorable to removing the feeding tube, but damn, what's this starvation thing? Why are they making Terri suffer so much? It's so brutal and barbarian, that I wonder if starving Terri to death is really much better than letting her live her pointless life. You know what I would REALLY have done? I would have given her an overdose of morphine, and let her pass immediately and without any pain. I cannot tolerate pain, neither mine nor that of innocent others. I only hope that Terri dies fast, as fast as possible, because this pronlonged starvation is really what makes me suffer the most for her. I know her parents cannot suggest something like this because it's against their gruesome, pain thirsty, sadistic god's principles, but why doesn't her husband do something? Let this woman end her pain. Please.

Post Number Twenty-One: Facts? Not Quite The Point

2005-03-29T13:24:00.000+02:00

Of Facts

It is not really important how things are in the moment they are happening. What counts the most is how they will be perceived by our descendants, and what effect they will have because of this perception over the course of history.

Elaboration left to when I have time for it.

Post Number Twenty: The Republican Mother

2005-03-27T01:06:00.000+01:00

Of Abortion and Embryos

This post will be told in the form of a short story. Short stories are an instrument used by Jesus Christ among others to convey complex messages to the masses. Christ's stories were called parables. Mine is not a parable, it's just a short story.

There once was a Republican woman who was converted to Roman Catholicism. She had a 5 year old son and she had been instructed by her Church that she was supposed to love him and raise him as a Catholic. She and her husband, an Italian Catholic who belonged to a sect called "Communion and Liberation" once decided to have a second honeymoon. They went on a cruise in the Caribbean Sea.
The will of God is often unpredictable. The ship wrecked on shallow waters and it started sinking. Safeboats were crowded. Obedient to the teachings of the Catholic Church, the woman let her husband go first, because a woman must be ready to sacrifice and a husband is the owner of his wife, just like Jesus is the owner of the Church. There remained room for only one person on the boat.
The Republican woman saw her son crying. He was still on board. Of course she had to save the child! She hugged her son, lifted him, and was ready to let him go to safety when she realized with horror that something else was still on board. There was a tank containing embryos!
The Republican woman immediately recalled that the Pope and the leaders of the sect "Communion and Liberation" said that embryos are humans. There could be a thousand humans in the tank. The woman knew what to do. She put her son back on board and ran to save the tank of embryos.
The woman and her son died in the wreckage. The tank of embryos made it to safety ashore. It was still lucid and in perfect conditions when the Catholic husband hugged it and called it "God's children".

There isn't much need to add more, but I will anyway.
Catholics keep ranting about embryos being humans. Would they save embryos instead of a human being?
News for Catholics: Embryos are embryos, humans are humans, and embryos are not humans. And if I were on board of a sinking ship, sure as Catholic hell I would kick the damn embryos off board and save a child.
Perhaps Republicans and Catholics see it differently.

Moral of this story: Abortion is not murder. It is women's right. But it's hard to explain to people who don't deem women equal to men. As usual I don't really care what they believe, but sure as hell I am the staunchiest supporter of the right to Abortion (and the right to research on embryos: because healing the living is more important than preserving the never - ever - born).
Oh, and we are going to vote a law on artificial fecundation made by the sect of Communion and Liberation in this country. No point to explain the details of their law. If we were in the Middle Ages, probably the Inquisition would find it too conservative. It will be an immense pleasure to vote against it. I am looking forward to it.

Post Number Nineteen: Freedom

2005-03-26T13:21:00.000+01:00

Of the importance of Freedom

Some people rever God. I rever Freedom.

It is important to explain this concept of Freedom. To my right, there hangs a poster made by me. It is entitled A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress Assembled, July 4, 1776.
In 1776 the USA were a brave new nation grounded firmly on the values of the Philosophers of Enlightment. Among their paramount theses, Liberty was the most cherished. Unluckily the USA took their path through history and now at least half of its population is made of arrogant bigots that impose their will to others; nothing is more anti-American than present day American administration. In fact, if Jefferson could see Bush, he could have one of the following two reactions:
1. Sit in a corner, take his head in his hands and weep in silence;
2. Jump at George Bush's throat and strangle him.
I would hope for the latter but the first is more likely.

It is not my intention here to dig further into the American case. It would take me way too far. It suffices to say that I am an admirer of the original intent that served as a ground for the USA.

I am extremely resonant with the concept of Freedom. There is no way to describe how Freedom feels. But it feels good.

Now, consider the following statement:
I am a strong supporter of the movement to legalize cannabis.

Generally, it is believed that supporters of this movement are marijuana smokers, therefore they are drugged bastards and their ideas don't deserve being taken into consideration.
Surprise: I am not a marijuana smoker. In fact, I am part of that exiguous minority of people that never smoked a joint. Or tasted it. Or even approached a joint. In fact, I don't even know how marijuana looks like. The fact that I never smoked marijuana has absolutely nothing to do with its being illegal. It has to do with something that was the second part of my disappeared post number sixteen, that I will not summarize here (I will do it someday, but not now). It is also certain, that legal or not, I will never smoke a joint. If I went to Amsterdam, I wouldn't smoke a joint either.
I don't think that marijuana is unhealthy. I in fact am convinced that the press is intentionally presenting misleading claims to the population to drive smokers toward the market of nicotine, which is immensely more dangerous and deadly than any amount of marijuana we can think of. Cigarettes are poisonous, venemous, cancerous, and devastatingly addictive. Tobacco is one of the greatest evils the society has ever conceived, and the most fiendish spin-off of Colombo's discovery of America in 1492. Tobacco market is controlled by a number of societies, most of them based in the USA, and those in charge of them make an enormous, huge, humongous amount of money by selling cigarettes to people. There're few things I hate more than cigarette smokers, and one of them is cigarette producers.
These people do not feel any moral commitment to protect public health, and in complete awareness of the dangers intentionally keep selling their poison to the millions in order to raise their society's behemothic profits. It is vastly in their interest to demote other forms of smoke and promote only theirs.
Nicotine is a drug. Cannabis is a drug. Nicotine is addictive, cannabis is not. (No dear, it's not. You are not going to sell me that b/s about cannabis being addictive. Go telling that to some Republican bigot. Here you waste your breath.)
Nicotine is legal. Cannabis is illegal.
I am a strong supporter of the legalization of cannabis, and a strong supporter of the prohibition to sell tobacco. There has to be a limit to how much damage a company can do to the public, and since the nations pays for the health care of its population, tobacco should not be sold. Cannabis is healthier so go for it.
If cannabis were legal, I wouldn't smoke it. I never smoked cigarettes either. I never tried a cigarette. I will never try a cigarette. So I would never try a joint either. I couldn't care less, nothing much would change in my life. But a lot of people would be happier and live a healthier life (and would probably less prone to go to war, if it is true that marijuana induces states of communion with the world and a lust for peace).
But it would be only partially true to state that I care about other people's happiness so much as to be a militant for the legalization of something I won't use anyway, just for them to be happy. This is not really the case, to be honest.
In earnest, the legalization of cannabis would mean that I am free to smoke it, and that I am free to choose not to smoke it. Here. I absolutely need this formal freedom. I don't want to do things. I want to know that I am free to do them. That I could do them if I wanted. And then I'll be very happy to not do them. To me, formal freedom is paramount. I absolutely don't care what others do with their freedom. I base my social ethics on the already stated principles of liberalism. As long as what they do doesn't interfere with anyone else, they can do whatever they want. And if it intereferes with a consenting someone, I don't care either. They have their life, life is to be lived only once, so do as they see fit. They want to have sex with a dozen girls and guys at the same time? They want to smoke joints? They want to worship God, Zeus, or the Pink Invisible Unicorn of Lalaland? Their business, not mine. I don't care if they think that what they are eating is not bread but flesh and what they are drinking is not wine but blood (it's a bit gory of a belief, but if they like it...). I don't care if women want to wear a cloth on their face or not, or if men want to cut off a piece of their own penis if that pleases them. It's their own life. As long as they do not force it on someone else, I couldn't give a damn whatever they do. Someone is tired of this stupid life thing and wants to die? Go for it. Someone else is suffering like hell but because he believes in some supernatural entity he wants to keep living? Go for it. When it happens to me, I will ask to let my body cease to live. If I were in a state of irremediable disease and suffering, or not fully capable, or in coma with no hope of retrieving consciousness, I'd want to die. Really. In fact, I would demand to die in such a situation, and no damn god of no damn church is allowed to tell me I can't.
I am a fierce supporter of euthanasia. In this case, I would also benefit from it, but I cannot stand the sufferance of people too, and I can stand even less the gory cruelty of those relatives that inflict the pain of living to suffering beings, to protect their own feelings. I personally heard an old catholic bitch whose daughter is kept alive by a machine and won't ever recover, that "it helps her so much to live side by side with pain" and that she "thanks god for giving her an opportunity to witness pain". They are always thinking to themselves. Does the catholic bitch think that her daughter would also thank god for inflicting pain on her so that her mother could live side by side with pain?
The god of the catholics is a bloodthirsty sadist with no sense of humanity. I am glad I am not a catholic. Sometimes I wonder, if God existed for real, then Catholics are unknowingly worshipping Satan, and the Pope is the vicarious of Behelzebub on Earth. The Bible was certainly inspired by Lucipher, while God was sent to hell for protesting his authority. Jesus Christ tried to speak of peace but Satan had him killed and, as a final note of pleasurable despise, the Devil obtained that Christians worshipped only one picture of Christ: That of him on the cross. Satan must feel terribly amused to see the man that challenged him displayed dead on the cross in every church of the world. This is the only possible explanation for the intrinsic evil of the Church. They control life, they control sex, they brainwash people: who else would do this if not an intrinsically evil and perverted demon of evil? So, if God existed, then he lost his fight to Satan and the Church is the means of the Devil to rule the world. Hail, Satan!
I of course do not believe that God exists. If I believed in God, I wouldn't anyway believe in Satan. Satan is ludicrous. The concept of god might have some philosophical value, but Satan... PLEASE!

Anyway, the church, and the catholic roman church in particular, is a fierce enemy of freedom. They try to prevent people from doing whatever they want. They enjoy taking control of others and force them to do what they wish. This usually implies giving a lot of money to the local priest. There is nothing I hate more than people that control other people. I despise those that feel in the right to chastise what others do to themselves. Go figure what I feel about these bloodthirsty Satan worshippers like Pope John Paul II (in particular, the most evil, contorted, vicious, perverted, eretic Satanist ever born on Earth - I despise John Paul II immensely more than Adolf Hitler, Josif Stalin, and perhaps Berlusconi - although of course Hitler and Stalin aren't nearly as bad as Berlusconi).

Enough about the Church. The point in all this is that I cherish Freedom. I love Freedom. I need Freedom. I love to be able to say anything I want. I am rejoincing for having the right to call John Paul a Satanist (because that's what he is) and spit poison against Hitler and Stalin, which I both despise. I gleefully state that Kennedy is better than Bush and liberals are better than Republicans, and that George Bush Jr. is the worst president of the USA in more than 200 years. I insist that Dan Quayle would be a better president than George Bush Jr. There.
I also love to be free to do things I won't do. Formal freedom is critical. I am not going to smoke a joint but I want to know it's free. I am not going to have sex with a prostitute, but I want prostitution legal. Like it is in Holland. In fact, I think all I want is to be Dutch. The people in the Netherlands don't know how lucky they are. Now, if only they didn't speak that strange language of theirs...

Disclaimer for Satan Worshippers:
Some people might feel offended for being called "Satan Worshippers". I would like to point out clearly that the real Satan Worshippers are the priests. The people do not know they are adoring the Devil. Anyway, since God and therefore the Devil do not exist at all, I do not really believe that Catholics are worshipping Satan. Whatever they worship, do as they like, but if some of their bigot relatives, including in particular a fundamentalist sect known as "Communion and Liberation" believe I will ever abide to any of their grotesque moral biddings, they are really, really, really delusional.

Post Number Eighteen: Back To The Future. Or not?

2005-03-24T11:32:00.000+01:00

Of the coincidence of past and future

This post is not exactly about the "coincidence of past and future".
Most people say "We are building our future". I disagree. We are not building our future. We are building our descendant's past.
Why do I say so? For two reasons. One is merely rational. It is in fact illogical to think of building your own future when we are fully aware of the fact that we are doomed, we will die in a relatively brief span of time. Very few things can be "built" in a lifetime, at least very few things that really matter. But many can be started. Of course, some great men like Alexander the Great could forge an Empire in less than a lifetime, but there aren't many men like Alexander.
Building one's future is highly unlikely to succeed. Besides, we have no idea if we'll still be alive tomorrow, so what future are we talking about?
The second reason is philosophical.
We don't exist out of the blue. We, our civilization, our ethics, our beliefs, everything we know of, is a consequence of all the things that happened before, the combination of all the deeds performed by those that came before us. Knowingly or unknowingly, Alexander the Great, Julius Ceasar, Charlemagne, Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Voltaire, Jefferson, Napoleon and Churchill weren't as much building their future as they were posing the roots for our past. We have inherited the world each one of them created, step by step, and we share the same responsibility toward those that will follow us. We should not let our civilization degrade in a craving for instant satisfaction and immediate pleasure, for our descendants will build upon the grounds we set for them. We must promote civilization toward novel routes, so that our descendants will have a richer past to look at when they will continue our work.

The future doesn't really exist yet; the past instead is very real and constitutes the basis from which we moved our first steps in the world. I think the world would move on a better route if we all thought we are not building our future, as if we were the last generation to ever live, but rather building the past of our descendants, who will build the past of their descendants, and so on, in a continuous struggle to improve what was given us by our ancestors.

Post Number Seventeen: O Tempora! O Mores!

2005-03-21T19:28:00.000+01:00

Of Morality and Ethics

It is said that Marcus Tullius Cicero, the most famous lawyer of Rome and one of the most prominent philosophers of Latin culture, uttered the sentence "O Tempora! O Mores!", commenting the degradation of Roman customs. The sentence can be freely translated as "What kind of age! What kind of customs!"

Mores.

The word mores, plural of mos, means both "customs" and "morality". In fact, the word morality itself derives from the Latin mores. According to dictionary definitions, morality is a behavior that doesn't contrast with the society's standards. In more than a way, morality is defined by a specific society.
There is another word, of much higher philosophical stand, that is ethics. Like most of the philosophically meaningful words, this one derives from the Greek, more precisely from the word ethos, which means behavior. Ethics are defined as a system of moral values. As a branch of philosophy, it deals with the nature of morals and the choices made by a person.
If you are interested into the details and the intricacies of morality and ethics, Immanuel Kant (German philosopher of immense importance, whose arguments lie at the basis of modern civilization) has written various books on the topic. It's not nearly an easy reading and I won't dig into his views, but it is certainly useful to get in touch with his writings.

Anyway, it seems quite obvious that morality lies "one step below" ethics, in the sense that:
ethics focus on the principles that define what is moral and what is not, therefore nothing can be deemed moral or otherwise without resorting to ethics first.

An example of modern ethics is easily brought to mind. Liberals (like me) define their ethics through two very powerful principles:

1) Individuals are free to do whatever they want, as long as their actions do not interfere with any other individual
2) Individuals are free to do whatever they want to other consenting individuals

It's all there. Liberalism in its essence. These two principles define a precise set of moral actions. Once these two principles are clear, it becomes immediately obvious that:

1) the religious opinions of others, whether they are the majority or the minority of the population, cannot influence in any way an individual's choices
2) the political beliefs of others, regardless of how cherished they are by the majority of the population, cannot influence in any way an individual's life
3) regardless of how annoying the sight of an individual's life is, the society has no right to chastise him or her for his choices.

Points 1) to 3) define moral behaviors.
Anyway, in each situation, it is possible to define what is "morally acceptable" for a liberal, by resorting to the principles of our ethics (I say our, because I am a liberal).

I will dig further into this matter later. This happens to be a small summary of my famous disappeared post.

Post Number Sixteen: A Space Odissey

2005-03-11T09:05:00.000+01:00

Of a disappeared post

It's very simple: last night I spent one hour plus typing one of my best conceived posts about ethics and morals, and what did this program do? Due to a failure in connecting with the site, which was probably overloaded in that moment, I was unable to upload it, and completely lost all I wrote. I presume that my words now are lost in a virtual space odissey. This indicates the importance of lasting things as opposed to not lasting things: last night's effort of mine is now completely useless because everything I produced is lost. It never saw the light, it never fulfilled the purpose it was conceived for. Sometimes, dealing with the Internet can be really frustrating. Presumably, I will type it all again when I am in the right mood.

Post Number Fifteen: In the forest singing sorrowless

2005-03-09T19:49:00.000+01:00

Of Happiness

First of all, yes, the title of this post is the last line of a poem by Tolkien, dedicated to the love story between the human Beren and the elf maid Luthien. The poem can be found in the Lord of the Rings and it's one of my favorites. Anyway, as usual I am using Tolkien's words to introduce a totally different topic. Recently I have paid a visit to my Asian friend's Blog, and that made me wonder on the concept of Happiness.

Happiness is central to Buddhism, in a certain sense, and it is central to our culture too. The American Declaration of Independence states that men have the right to the "pursuit of happiness". Nonetheless, it is never clear what happiness is supposed to mean. I am sure that in order to have the right to the pursuit of something, we should have an idea of what this something is.
I believe that each person in the world has a different perception of what should be defined as happiness, and this is the reason why no one ever managed to define it clearly. On the other hand, I suspect that some ideas of happiness are intrinsically taking us off-road, in the sense that in pursuing such forms of happiness we end up less than contented.
Personally, I deem the very concept of happiness misleading in principle, and the idea of a "pursuit of happiness" is even more misleading. There is nothing to pursue, I am quite sure. Some of my most cherished friends refer to their "doing" certain things in order to "be happy", or better, to "become happy". This implies that these people are not happy in this moment and perceive that somehow, following a certain course of actions they'll be led to a state of higher delight. Although I have been already accused to speak like a monk, which is quite funny considering I am probably the most atheist person in the world, I have pondered over the concept of happiness and have perceived an intimate truth (in the religious sense of the word), that happiness is that psychological state you reach when you stop pursuing it. Happiness, of course, is not the "contrary" of sadness. This perception of contrasting opposites is typical of Christian and Middle Eastern cultures, but it is not the only way to describe reality. Anyway, this would lead us very far from the core of my thoughts about this topic.
Some time ago, I took that Jung personality test the link to which you'll find among my favorite links, to the right. I think the result is very accurate and one of the things it says is particularly suitable to describe my attitude towards sensations. "Savor" rather than "categorize". There. I most definitely savor sensations, I really do not care about categorizing them. Some people get mad at trying to figure if they are in love or not, if they are happy or not, if they are having fun or not. They have certain ideas in mind of what being in love, being happy, having fun should feel like, and then categorize their sensations according to these standards. I don't. I don't even care about giving sensations a name. I can sit in front of the magnificent view from Stockholm's City Hall, staring at the trees in complete silence for hours. I savor the beauty. I am also the type that after spending one hour this way would raise an eyebrow and say "how pleasant".
Feelings are not really supposed to be categorized. Categories are a function of the rational mind, and feelings are by definition irrational. Careful here: feelings can be elicited by perfectly rational perceptions and considerations, but their ultimate nature cannot be described rationally. Any attempt to define happiness through a rational categorization is likely to yield no result.
The ultimate truth hidden in the Buddhist religion, the nirvana, cannot be reached through reason, that's exactly what those monks also say, and why they meditate that long. I do not really claim to be able to clear my mind like a Buddhist monk, but I believe that the first step consists in being able to savor sensations without attempting to categorize them. A good example, in my case, is eating a piece of chocolate. Have that ultimately exquisite delicacy melt in your mouth and stimulate your sensitive tongue, producing a storm of neural transmissions to the brain that signify pleasure - complete, total, mindless pleasure... (of course, I love chocolate).

The following concept is extremely hard for me to express through words, so I'll ask my reader to bear with me and excuse my failure in the attempt to communicate what is mostly beyond the reaches of spoken languages.

I think that what the Buddhist religion is trying to tell us about happiness is that, well, we must "discover" we are happy already.
Am I happy?

Well I don't like that word. Happiness usually comes with a Western idealization attached to it. We go about thinking that those smiling imbeciles in the commercials are happy, and that they have gotten that far because they bought that product. This is basically crap. Another Western society crap is that in order to be happy you must be in love (there will come a time to demote this stupid western concept called "love", just not yet). In fact, since it is almost impossible to separate my concept of happiness from that everyone else has in mind, I prefer to use the word serene. It is easier to tell people what being serene is and then explain that this is what the monks meant with the word happiness.
So am I serene?

Most definitely, I think I am. How come? Italy is led by a powercrazy dwarf, American democracy is overruled by a Texan warmonger that brings havoc everywhere in the planet. People suffer pretty much anywhere in the world, children die, my father died of cancer in 1997, I haven't managed to complete University studies after 10 years of attempts (thanks to the miserable academic system of this medieval country), we thrive on much less money than what we'd need to sustain our lifestyle, the boss I depend from in the office is an ultimate jerk whose name aptly translates into English as "Little Bitch"; I do not have a girlfriend (though I had some, don't worry) and I don't plan to have any in the foreseeable future, I do not go out on Saturday night, I do not smoke (I never smoked nor I ever will), I very rarely drink alcohol and with extreme moderation (especially because I get drunk after less than a glass of beer), I am not even particularly attractive and I am surrounded by a people of idiots that I dislike hardcore. Some people might infer that they are luckier than me. Nonetheless, I consider myself serene. The majority of reasons to be disappointed are either irrelevant (like Little Bitch) or relevant, but rational in nature (the dictatorship in Italy, the Texan warmonger in the USA). But in no way they can affect, for example, the ultimate pleasure I feel when I close my eyes for a moment and think of the gorgeous people I love and consider my friends, or the immense delight provided by the sight of trees, of flowers, of the Alps, or by listening to music, or by simply realizing that I am part of this world. This is of course, impossibly explained through words. One has to feel it, or not, there's no other way. But I think that, in the very end, we all are ultimately happy. All we need to realize is that those things that make us unhappy do not really matter. Somehow, the garden of Eden, the nirvana, are within us already. It just takes a damn lot of time and effort to realize that we never really had to go far to find them.

And then, we will find ourselves in the forest singing sorrowless.

Post Number Fourteen: The Great Gate Of Kiev

2005-03-07T18:31:00.000+01:00

Of the Legacy of Architectural Marvels

The Russian people is hard for me to understand. They are so much like Italians, that very often I feel completely puzzled by them. Luckily they created an immense legacy of artworks, and among those there are magnificent novels and music. Music is always my gateway to other cultures (although Indian music remains alien to me). There are some great compositions by Russian composers, and among them one of the most famous I can't fail to mention the Pictures from an Exhibition by Modest Moussorgkij. This is a piano composition, although the French Maurice Ravel arranged it for orchestra in a magnificent way (Ravel was a genius at orchestral arrangements). I was asked by a charming and sexy Russian girl who read one of my previous posts here, to provide links to music I mention here. This is not always easily done, because Classical Music requires to be listened at least as an MP3 and those don't come for free. In this case, though, I managed to find an impressively good live recording of the Pictures from an Exhibition in MIDI format, whose quality also strictly depends on the quality of your soundcard. I have a very good soundcard. If you comply to the same requirements (that is, if your MIDIs sound cool on your PC), you can follow this link to the music I am mentioning here. It's about 36 minutes of piano music.
http://www.kunstderfuge.com/midi-m.htm
Scroll down until you find "Mussorgskij", and listen to KATSUHIRO OGURI's version (NOT Robert Finley's, which is quite bad).
Anyway, Moussorgkij witnessed an art exhibition in Moscow and was deeply struck by what he view. He rushed home and in a sort of inspirational frenzy wrote down in a hurry a peculiar piano piece through which he intended to describe what he had just seen. Without digging too much in the details, I will mention that "Promenade" is Moussorgkij's musical description of his own wandering among the artworks. "Gnomus" describes a little statue of a deformed being, the composers imagines him to be an angry gnome that falls every few steps and curses the audience. "The Old Castle" portrays the picture of, well, an old castle, which obviously looked very melancholic to Moussorgskij. "Tuileries" was inspired by a painting of Paris' public gardens, "Bydlo" (one of my favorites) is the description of an old, drunk peasant from Poland, passing by on his cart singing some popular song, "Ballet" is actually a dance of nestlings still half in their shells, "Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle" was inspired by the paintings of a rich man and a poor man, "Limoges Le Marché" is a description of the market of Limoges (it's easy to see it populated by chatting women), "Sepulcrum Romanum" was inspired by a painting of Paris' catacombs, "Baba Yaga" describes the hut of a witch of Russian folklore, and the last "The Great Gate of Kiev" was inspired by a grand model of a new gate for the city of Kiev. Incidentally it was never built.

I hope I have satisfied those of my readers that wanted to listen to the music I mention. Anyway, the topic of my post is not Moussorgskij's great composition, but rather architecture.

If you are listening to the Great Gate of Kiev, pay a moment of attention to it. Can you imagine how it could be like, considering the music? In my personal vision, inspired by this music, I see it like a huge, immense gate, pretty much in Orthodox style, completely covered by a shiny green mosaic. This music sounds very green and gold doesn't it? Though I am not sure other people see the color of music. It's something I have always perceived but I don't expect it to be a common thing.
A piece of architecture (a model to be precise) inspired such a grand composition. How come?
I have recently seen a documentary on TV about the wonders of Sicilian architecture from the Norman age. For those who might wonder, Sicily was first conquerred by the Greeks, then by the Romans, then by the Arabs, the Norsemen and the Spaniards. Each of these peoples left an indelible mark in the architecture of the island. The best examples are to be found in the Arabian and Norman era. All these buildings are wonderful. There is a cloister with a fountain of incredible beauty: its central part is a column of marble carved like the trunk of a palmtree, and the leaves are formed by the jets of water coming from its top. A must see.
I was staring at those fantastic works of art, the achievements of genius of great proportions, and all of a sudden my mum said "Italy is beautiful everywhere you go".
Technically speaking, this is true. Italy holds 47% of the entire planet's art. But this sentence triggered a train of thoughts in my brain.
Italy is beautiful. Why is it beautiful? Because there are these beautiful monuments of course, and so many of them. Architecture is beautiful. Why are there so many beautiful monuments? Because there were artists conceiving them - but they worked for someone of course, nobody works for free. In fact, the gorgeous monuments were demanded by kings, emperors, or wealthy people who intended to celebrate something. A wonderful, and I MEAN wonderful cathedral in Monreale near Palermo was built by order of a Norman King to celebrate his culture over the beaten Arabians'. The Coliseum in Rome was built by will of Emperor Nero. The Pyramids were built by order of the Pharaoh. Temples in Greece, cathedrals in central Europe, magnificent palaces in China, the Taj Mahal in India, the very city of Saint Petersburg, the sweetly sexy statue of the Baltic Princess in Helsinki... The examples are really many. In all cultures, for some reason or another, importance was given to things through the creation of awesome works of art and architecture that were meant to last, as a legacy of the people and the culture who created them. Italy is beautiful, ultimately, because a lot of people in this country (not necessarily Italians, actually, more often than not, foreigners) wanted to build something meant to last, and to be beautiful. More than spoken words and might of armies, the laypeople recognized their culture, their belonging to something greater than their mere lives, by watching around. Can you imagine how it must feel to be a citizen of Rome, during the golden age of the Empire, and see the mighty Coliseum stand in front of you, something so grand that nobody in the known world had ever seen a similar construction? Or to witness the Acropolis of Athens and realize it was built a thousand years ago and it will still be there in a thousand years? Have you ever felt that sense of immensity, of eternity, that speaks through the marvels of Chinese architecture?
Then I realized something devastatingly appalling... our culture, the culture of entertainment and lightness, is doing pretty much nothing in this sense. We have given up architectural beauty in exchange for functionalism. Our buildings are not meant to celebrate anything at least in the majority of cases, and in almost all cases are not meant to last. We live in a world where beauty has become the legacy of our ancestors. When Nero built the Coliseum, he didn't mean it to last for a decade or until he was Emperor, or until someone else built something over it. It was meant to last. It was meant to be a legacy. And for this reason it was beautiful, and the layman down in the street was still impressed by its grandeur centuries after the Roman Empire had fallen. We all, people of the world, owe a lot to our ancestors. They have given us countless marvels to contemplate. And what are we doing for our descendants? Pretty much nothing. We have betrayed the vision of those that came before us, who left us things meant to last, and nowadays concentrate on cheap, strictly functional buildings that are not meant to last. I think that one of the reasons people have stopped dreaming and they have lost the sense of "importance" that was more common in previous centuries, is that the layman has nothing to contemplate anymore, unless it is something from the past. Where are our Coliseums, our Taj Mahals, our Pyramids, our Hanging Gardens, our Machu Picchus, our Great Walls, our Neuschwansteins? I feel the need for our culture to return to substance, to return to create beauty even if it is expensive, and not functional at all.
Men cannot just be practical and functional, there's more with us than just working and get mad at paying taxes right? I think we need to recover that feeling of marvel that inspired Moussorgskij's "Great Gate of Kiev".

Next time you walk down the street and contemplate the horrors of our modern functional buildings, try to ask yourself: if Moussorgskij lived in our time, would he really compose a "Great Gate of Kiev"?

Post Number Thirteen - Superstition

2005-03-07T18:28:00.000+01:00

Of Superstition

No, this post is not about Superstition as it could be inferred by some of those who know me. It is about how even I at times can be superstitious. I am absolutely convinced that the number of this post is connected to jynx and bad luck, and it is downright for this irrational reason that I intend to skip this post and type my thoughts in the next one.
Meet you in next post.

Post Number Twelve: No More Outraged

2005-03-06T12:06:00.000+01:00

Of Speaking Too Early

It is a good habit not to speak too early. Somehow this software had memories of my post number Ten and uploaded it together with post number Eleven. So I am not outraged anymore and quite pleased instead. So be it.

Post Number Eleven: Outrage

2005-03-06T12:02:00.000+01:00

Of outrage

I have spent at least one hour and a half typing my last post, and this stupid software dared fail to upload it ... My thoughts of post number Ten about dreams completely lost? I am OUTRAGED!!

It will take some time for me to recover from this blow. I will have to retype that again. It is absolutely annoying. I hate when such things happen!!

Post Number Ten: The Power Is In A Dream

2005-03-06T10:37:00.000+01:00

Of the Power of Dreams

I would like to be very precise since the beginning. I am not referring to dreams such as those that come at night while you are asleep, and that the ancient Greeks thought were suggested by the god of sleep Morpheus. Although I have a certain appreciation for the Greek myth and an instinctive sympathy with Morpheus, whose catering of human sleep was abruptly interrupted by the invasion of a much bloodier Jewish god, the fact remains that I am not going to talk about night dreams.

What I am going to think of is dreams intended as "visions". We all have "visions", at least most of us do. Some people envision a better life, some a better house. It is part of the human nature to be able to imagine the outcome of actions; it is an evolutionary accident that turned out very useful when our ape-ish ancestors started planning their actions in advance. We all know for example that if we scare a rabbit, the animal will flee. That, together with some planning, can lead us to devise a strategy that will trap the rabbit and provide a dinner for the tribe.
There is a side effect of this innate ability of human: it doesn't have to be applied to hunting alone.
Some of us look at the world and imagine how it could be if it were different, in the same way our ancestors looked at the rabbit and tried to figure how it could be trapped. Anyway, most people have the problem to be able to feed themselves and survive to the next day.
It is probably the right moment to tackle this matter.
To some pragmatists that grew in very practical civilizations, it happens occurs that after all, what matters the most is to feed your body, shelter it, and survive. This is basically what all animals do after all, and humans are animals. Anything beyond these basic necessities is superfluous. As if, somehow, being practical and pragmatist, mainly focused on feeding yourself and your family and gather a reasonable amount of wealth to survive and breed, were the ultimate goal of life. As if, in some sense, there weren't much else in life.
I find this reasoning not only annoying, and I really mean it, but extremely ephemeral, vain, empty, void. How can a wonderful thinking machine like the human brain be reduced to an appendage of a body whose main goal is to gather food? Of course, I can understand that if the body is not well fed, the brain has little to think of, but once the body is healthy, is that all? Isn't there anything else that matters? So are we like African zebras that year after year, season after season, migrate from one region to another region, back and forth, chasing the edible grasslands and providing food for the lions, only to ultimately die after giving birth to a new generation of zebras that will behave like the previous one? Aren't we capable of reasoning too? With all the potentials that Nature gave us through evolution, aren't we going to do anything else but finding a job, gain money, use it to buy food, and wait for the end to come and close the curtain over a scenery of ultimate inane existence?
To me, this feels like a complete waste. It's like buying a sport car to slowly drive downtown on a 100 yard route back and forth, until the engine is so old that it doesn't start anymore. It's like having a grand piano and use it to play Frère Jacques. I cannot tolerate wastes, and dedicating one's life to gather the tools one requires to feed himself is a waste.
Feeding yourself is just the beginning. It's what you need to get done in order to start living. What kind of pointless futile thing would life be if all we need were to feed ours bodies with enough proteins to survive to the next day? What for? We die nonetheless. It's just a matter of when. Memento mori, said the ancient Romans, "Remember you have to die".
So, for these practical pragmatists, what matters the most is to postpone the ultimate end as much as possible. To keep living as long as one can live, until the end, inevitably, comes... et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas. And, to remain alive, lose the reason to live.
This is not acceptable to me. I cannot accept it. I especially cannot tolerate those that in this moment are thinking "you speak like that because you are well fed". Of course I am well fed, and of course I speak like this because I am well fed, if I weren't well fed I would be interested in feeding myself and then what? What would it be of my life once I am well fed? Once the poor African kid finally gets the food he needs and the water he requires to survive, once he's healthy and in good shape, well then what? What is he going to do with his life once he gets what he needs to live? Just live on? Keep feeding? And then die? So, what is the difference with dying right away? If all we have to do is to keep feeding ourselves until we die, then we can die immediately and put an end to this stupid experiment of nature called humanity. If we are nothing else but resource devourers we are unnecessary. There's no point at getting all that loving and caring with the African kid and give him food to survive to the next day. If all we care about is to postpone his death a couple decades, to let him live a totally pointless, aimless life of catering to his own most basical instincts, then we could as well kill him right away and it would make little difference.
LUCKILY there is much more with being human then just feeding. Humans think. Humans dream. Humans create. Humans shape the world. We are able to provide our life with a meaning. It doesn't really have one, we are the ones that attach a meaning to it.
It comes as an absolutely necessary consequence, that humans are not just animals to be taught how to feed themselves, but wonderfully complex thinking machines that require to be fed at a very basic and generally irrelevant level to start being real humans.
It is really appalling that a majority of people living in the modern ephemeral epoch do not understand this very basic truth. The ultimate essence of life is its meaning. Most people don't get it and don't really attach any meaning to their existence. They just live on. They stay contented of surviving, finding their niche in the giant mechanism created by others in other places and in other eras, and keep surviving until the end comes. Some actually find this vanity of life quite disturbing, and without being fully aware of it they resort to religions to fill their existence with some sense. So, many for example think that after living their pointless life of survival, they will be admitted in a very nice place called Heaven were they will be happy. Happy? I keep wondering, once they are happy, then WHAT? The point with being happy is that you aren't. When you are sick you of course want to recover, and when you recover? what happens then? You feel good. And then? What do you want to do, feel better? and then even better? And once you really feel "best"? What's the point with Heaven? What's the point with living a (short) life of vanity in the hope that things will be better after we die? I find the obstinacy of such blindfold believing very annoying, especially when enriched by the public display of superficial, vain behaviors, whose only point is that of pleasing some entity who has the power to let us in the nice place after we die. Usually such behaviors are very much in line with whatever the leader of the community wants you to do in order to control you better and strip you of your ability to think by yourself.

Fewer and fewer of us nowadays dare to dream. Nonetheless, history teaches us something of immense importance. Some people's dreams have shaped the destiny of entire humanity. Some people gave a meaning to their life: pursuit an ideal, a dream, a vision of something. Not a life after death in some delusionary Eden, but the creation of a better world down here. Normally, such dreams fail to be realized, but this is hardly the point. It's the pursuit of a dream that led the greatest among us to reach the highest achievements of our species.
I will provide the following, inspiring examples.
Alexander the Great, a Macedonian King who died at the age of 33, envisioned a united world, where all cultures were equal, intertwined to create a new, richer entity. Led by his dream, one that no one in his time really understood, he became one of the greatest legends of human history. Alexander's fifty thousand oplites met on the field of battle Persians counted in the millions and won. He pursued his dream of finding the borders of the world and unite it all. A Macedonian young guy in his late twenties, without the aid of cars and engines, without maps or medicines, without satellites, without bombs, without genetically engineered food... a man and his fifty thousand faithful oplites crossed the known world and reached the unknown. Alexander marched all the way to India, creating the greatest empire the world had seen to that point. His deeds echo in eternity, and although he died young, although his dream wasn't realized, he shaped the destiny of the world.
Rome. Rome is a great, immense dream. The ancient Romans chased a dream, a dream that was the Greatness of Rome. Despite the bad advertising that some Anglosaxon and French contemporary scholars provide them with, the Romans were the ultimate force of civilization in a rude, primitive Europe. Rome never conquered other cultures but eniriched itself with them. In the Roman Empire, a citizen of Rome was equal to others regardless of his nationality. There were Roman Emperors from Spain (e.g. Traianus), from Africa (Adrianus)... How many African immigrants have a chance to be leader of a Western nations nowadays? Rome was the cradle of Europe, and its ideals lived through the dark ages of the Christian Church to speak through the millennia. But how did Rome came to become such an immense cradle of history and culture, how could Rome be the essence itself of civilization?
Through the dreams of its prominent citizens. Julius Ceasar, Marcus Aurelius, Scipio Africanus, Augustus, Traianus, and the philosophers and poets Seneca, Cicero, Vergilius, Ovidius... These people dared to chase their dream, a dream that was Rome.
Charles the Great, in the ninth century, had a dream too. He wanted to return Europe to its Golden age. After the fall of the Roman Empire, our continent had turned into a barbarian land, prey of the obscure schemings of the church and its delirious moment of glory. Pursuing a dream that he never managed to realize, Charles the Great forged a kingdom known as Holy Roman Empire (and I would like to stress how the immensity of Rome still echoed centuries after the fall of the empire, if Charles wanted to give the name Roman to his Empire). That kingdom is what later had to become France.
Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot dreamt of a world where the Pope and the King ceased to hallucinate the population with their lies and wrote down their ideals. These ideals led Jefferson and others to state that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...". These are immense words. They are so immense that they led not one but two peoples to revolution and they shaped our world and our mind completely.

Alexander the Great, Julius Ceasar, Charles the Great, Voltaire, Jefferson - and nowadays John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and many others... all these people had dreams and dared to follow them. Their life had a much greater meaning than just feeding themselves. Their deeds echo through eternity. Most of them died young, or killed. Alexander was 33 when he was struck by disease. Julius Ceasar was killed by a group led by Cassius who had a different vision of Rome. John Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. But they gave their life, however brief, a meaning. Their lives are to be taken as examples to us, who basically survive. Look at what other human beings, not different from us, could do thanks to our ability to think and dream! The power of dreaming is immense, the courage of dreaming is too rare. But as long as dreamers will walk the grass of Earth, their steps will echo through eternity.

Post Number Nine: Snow

2005-03-03T19:06:00.000+01:00

Today, the only thing I intend to think of is the snow outside. It snowed for good at last in Milan. Winter is the most fascinating season of the year, and it is so because it snows in winter. So it's really appalling that in Milan it doesn't copiously snow every winter as it should do. Luckily at last this MARCH it decided to give me a lot of white, soft, lovely snow. Therefore I am going out with my sister playing snowballs and I have no time to type posts in my Blog.
Let's go!

Post Number Eight: Danse Macabre

2005-03-02T18:57:00.000+01:00

Of Graveyards

I am not too fond of French composers in general. Take Offenbach: nice to the ear (to some extent) but totally pointless (my personal opinion is that it's quite cretin, to be precise). Maybe because his music was supposed to be played while girls dressed in sexy clothes lifted their skirts and showed their legs and other feminine parts of their body to the (male) audience - a form of entertainment that is very Parisienne and very close to many contemporary forms of amusement that totally fail to amuse me. Anyway (luckily) not all French composers are like Offenbach. I have a sincere esteem for Camille Saint-Saëns. Among his creations there is one called Danse Macabre, or Dance of the Dead. It intends to be descriptive of a specific scene in a very literal way. It begins with twelve bell rings, marking midnight. A pizzicato depicts the steps of the Grim Reaper entering an old graveyard. Then the Grim Reaper takes a violin, starts playing a gruesome dance, and slowly the dead begin to rise from their graves. They join the Grim Reaper and dance to his violin, ghosts and rotten corpses, and skeletons alike. It is quite amusing how the composer tried to describe skeletons through hard wooden sounds and ghosts through distant bells and cimbals. It is intended as a sort of black humour composition, reminding very much of the style of the Addams Family, if you know what I mean. The composition ends with a cock-a-doodle-doo marking the sunrise. The dead return to their graves and the Grim Reaper leaves the Graveyard. Perhaps to return?

I have always had a certain fascination with graveyards, but Italian Catholic Cemeteries are not very much the type I favor. In catholic graveyards, a high wall normally prevents you from entering the place (or even viewing it from the outside), and usually you are only allowed in when the local priest intends you to visit your dead. That's mostly during certain hours of certain days of certain weeks depending on the priest's rules. Inside, there is little room for grass of trees. Everything is crystal clean, tombstones are arranged in perfect order side by side, with their shiny marbles taken care of for precisely 20 years by the local priest. After 20 years (normally, but sometimes more) the body of your beloved deceased is taken off the grave to leave room to new bodies and incinerated. The cinders are then collected by the priest and secluded in a designated locale together with the cinders of other long-gone humans, for you to pay a visit (according to the priest's time schedule). Not really my idea of graveyard.
A graveyard should be open and relatively removed from the cityscape. Possibly, it should be visited at night, in a cold, humid night of late November, when the only, twisted-trunk trees have lost their leaves to the aging Autumn. The old tombstones should look as ancient as the date they annouce implies, and simple granite should replace expensive marbles. Possibly, they should be erected and not placed horizontally as they do in Catholic cemeteries. And of course, the dead bodies should be left in the place they were buried.

Places like this, of course exist, and I have been lucky enough to visit one in the right moment of the night and of the year.
Thanks to a gorgeous girl I know of (gorgeous in many senses) I had the opportunity to visit a city called Glasgow, which happens to be on a European island of ancient history and tradition called Great Britain, and more precisely in the Northern part of this island, which is normally known with the historically evocative and charming name of Scotland. The people of Scotland have a great advantage over the people of Italy: they are not Catholic. Therefore their graveyards are not Catholic either. The Scots (a warm and lively people themselves) seem to have an innate good taste for creepy, disquieting locales, which is especially true for their graveyards; thanks to my friend, I was led to a hill in Glasgow, on the top of which there laid one of the most charming graveyards I have ever seen. It could be that my memory is adding some flavor to this, but I recall it being a cold, humid night, and the tombstones were particularly huge, standing at least 6 feet tall, which made them look even more charming due to the foggy atmosphere. I think I will recall that graveyard trip as one of the most impressive sight-seeing tours of my life (which include the previous night's visit to another, lovely graveyard in Edinburgh, although in that case it happened that we were locked inside the locale, and had some trouble figuring a way out - although fascinating, I wasn't too inclined to spend the entire night in the company of a charming girl and a hundred dead bodies - at least, I could do without the dead bodies).
Graveyards are terribly charming, I believe. I keep thinking of that graveyard in Scotland when I listen to the Danse Macabre, and I wonder if the Grim Reaper ever passed by that place, at midnight, and had the skeletons dance at the sound of its violin...

Post Number Seven: Fixations

2005-03-01T19:21:00.000+01:00

Of hobbies and fixations

Most people have hobbies. They cultivate such hobbies in their spare time and relax from the stressful course of their lives.
I don't have hobbies, I have fixations. I cultivate my fixations continuosly and keep mumbling over them without restraint or shame. Here is a list of my most preminent fixations:

1. The Lord Of The Rings (and other Middle Earth things)
2. Movies (including the above mentioned)
3. Classical Music
4. Astronomy, Science and Carl Sagan
5. Books
6. Fantasy & Science Fiction
7. Beautiful Women

These are my principal seven fixations. I like to refer to them as my "Seven Sins", although I don't perceive them as Sins if not in the sense that everything the Christian church considers a Sin is terribly pleasant and attractive. I have other fixations of course, and many interests that are not fixations, but these seven are the most important.
One quick note on fixation nr seven that (I bet) you have noticed first. No, I am not fixated with sex. I personally think that sex is annoying. I am fixated with women, and their beauty, and how I perceive it, and what I consider beautiful. Most girls I like are not considered beautiful by others and I don't give a damn about it. My fixation with women is also connected with (and probably descended from) my profound dislike for men. I find men dull and repetitive, devastatingly ugly to sight and annoyingly boring. I perceive women as witty, smart, astute, independent, charming and beautiful. There shouldn't be any men in the world, we suck. It should be a women world. Or else, a world ruled by women where men are allowed to thrive as long as thy don't bother them too much. Anyway, enough about women.

If I have seven fixations, how come that in my posts only a couple have been mentioned?

Explanation: because I haven't had enough time to explore even the first fixations of mine. Give me time and you'll see that each fixation will have its deserved room. And now, I intend to go back to one of my fixations.

Later, pals.

Post Number Six: Music And Poetry. Art Again.

2005-02-28T17:53:00.000+01:00

Of the primacy of subjectivity in the ability to appreciate Art.

Let's consider the following examples:

"Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free:
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thy self alone,
Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive:
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
Which, used, lives th' executor to be."
(W. Shakespeare, Sonnets, IV)

"A Elbereth Gilthoniel,
silivren penna míriel
o menel aglar elenath!
Na-chaered palan-díriel
o galadhremmin ennorath,
Fanuilos, le linnathon
nef aear, sí nef aearon!"
(J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of The Rings, Book II, Chp. 10)

"Why do people fall in love?
Don't we know love is full of dangers?
Letting loose our foolish hearts
In this world full of perfect strangers
Maybe this time you will find
The moon will treat you kinder
Yes, I'm sure that I recall
That's the reason people fall...
Love is needing to belong
Right or wrong, when you feel the fire
Love is living in mid-air
young and rare, on a sky-high wire
Hoping this time it will last
You feel your heart beat faster
Yes, I'm sure that I recall
That's the reason people fall in love
Taking chances you would never take
When wide awake...you risk it all
Half afraid he'll only break your heart
Still you will close you eyes and simply fall
Why do people fall in love?
Are we fools with no hope of winning?
Or perhaps we always see
One last chance for a new beginning
Holding on and letting go
But never really knowing
Well, I guess that after all
That's the reason people fall in love"
(L. Eder, lyrics for the song Why do people fall in love)

What's the difference among these three quotes?
The first one is a Sonnet by Shakespeare, the second, a poem in Sindarin by Tolkien, the third are lyrics for a pop song.
The Sonnet is not only intense with meaning, but the result of a long and careful construction intended to build something of transcending beauty. In fact, what Shakespeare does here is what I already described before as "using the tools you have learnt to master to convey a message". The message is behind the words, but the words themselves are magnificiently following each other in a perfect example of balance. Alliterations, rhymes, and charming sounds are spread evenly throughout the poem. Not a word could be changed without breaking the equilibrium of this composition.
The poem by Tolkien is in Sindarin, a language invented by him that was meant to be beautiful. Tolkien had an incredibly subtle sensitivity to the beauty of languages, which brought him to believe that the musical essence of words is at least as important as the meaning they convey. Tolkien's poem is essentially beautiful for the sounds of it are, at least in his intentions, musical and pleasant to the ear. It doesn't matter whether we can understand the words or not, whether we speak Sindarin or not. The beauty of this poem resides in its sound.
The song lyrics are very close to speech. They mean what they mean, they were never intended to hide anything. They are not supposed to sound particularly beautiful per se. In this sense, they are "only" words. This song is purely "romantic" in its intent, and its lyrics show no particular spark of genius or inspirational marvel.

Why did I make this example today?

The vast majority of modern pop songs, are appreciated by the public especially for their lyrics. This makes of course no sense to me, since what touches my soul is the sound and not the meaning of a song's lyrics. Anyway I can understand how certain people that do not share my quite peculiar sensitivity to sound would completely ignore elements such as melody and harmony to concentrate on what is more easily "understood", that is, basically, words. But, as I proved with my three examples, words can be a lot more than a medium to convey an obvious meaning. Words are the tools poets and writers use to create Art. A simple romantic text with scarce poetic value is, well, disappointing, at least to me. Compared to what lyrics Shakespeare or Tolkien could have written for that same song, I find Linda Eder's choice of words really dull and appalling, leaving much to be wanted.

Some Italian singer/authors have concentrated more seriously on the lyrics of their songs. One of the best examples is Fabrizio De André, a very Leftist singer who paid extreme attention to his lyrics (they were actually decent poems themselves) and whose words normally hid more profound meanings. Here are the lyrics of one of his songs.

"Solo la morte m'ha portato in collina
un corpo fra i tanti a dar fosforo all'aria
per bivacchi di fuochi che dicono fatui
che non lasciano cenere, non sciolgon la brina.
Da chimico un giorno avevo il potere
di sposar gli elementi e farli reagire,
ma gli uomini mai mi riuscì di capire
perché si combinassero attraverso l'amore.
Affidando ad un gioco la gioia e il dolore.
Guardate il sorriso guardate il colore
come giocan sul viso di chi cerca l'amore:
ma lo stesso sorriso lo stesso colore
dove sono sul viso di chi ha avuto l'amore.
Dove sono sul viso di chi ha avuto l'amore.
Che strano andarsene senza soffrire,
senza un volto di donna da dover ricordare.
Ma è forse diverso il vostro morire
voi che uscite all'amore che cedete all'aprile.
Cosa c'è di diverso nel vostro morire.
Primavera non bussa lei entra sicura
come il fumo lei penetra in ogni fessura
ha le labbra di carne i capelli di grano
che paura, che voglia che ti prenda per mano.
Che paura, che voglia che ti porti lontano.
Ma guardate l'idrogeno tacere nel mare
guardate l'idrogeno al suo fianco dormire:
soltanto una legge che io riesco a capire
ha potuto sposarli senza farli scoppiare.
Soltanto una legge che io riesco a capire.
Fui chimico e, no, non mi volli sposare.
Non sapevo con chi e chi avrei generato:
son morto in un esperimento sbagliato
proprio come gli idioti che muoion d'amore.
qualcuno dirà che c'è un modo migliore."
(F. De André, Lyrics for Un Chimico)

This is actually quite beautiful, with rhymes and precise metrics. I am not skilled enough to be able to translate a poem into English (I would hardly be able to write a poem in my own language), so the best I can do is to provide a literal translation, warning the reader that my scarce skills are responsible for the poor result of what I am typing, and that the original text in Italian was much more poetic:

Lyrics for "A Chemist"
"Only death took me to the hills
a body among many to give phosphorus to air
for bivouacs of will-o'-the-wisps
leaving no cinders, melting no frost.
As a chemist I once had the power
to marry the elements and make them react,
but always I failed to understand men
why they combined through love,
entrusting to a game their joy and their pain
Watch the smile, watch the colour
how they play on the face of who looks for love:
but the same smile, the same colour
where are they on the face of who's found love?
Where are they on the face of who's found love?
How strange to leave without suffering
without a woman's face to recall.
But perhaps your dying is different,
for you who exit to love, who concede to April
What's different in your dying?
Spring doesn't knock, She confident comes in
like smoke She breaks through every cleft
She has lips of flesh, hair of corn,
what a fear, what a desire She takes you by hand
what a fear, what a desire She takes you away
But watch hydrogen silent in the sea
watch hydrogen sleep to her side
only a law that I can understand
could marry them without making them burn
Only a law that I can understand.
I was a chemist, and no, I chose not to marry.
I didn't know whom and whom I'd generate:
I died in a wrong experiment
just like idiots who die for love.
Someone will say there's a better way."

This, in itself, is a very nice poem. I cannot fail to appreciate the effort and the skill put out by Fabrizio De André. I understand this is Art, and I wonder if my readers will perceive the difference between this text and the one by Linda Eder. They are both about love, which is why I chose this one. They are also both about "why people fall in love". But they are very different. In Italian it is also very musical, and some of its peculiarities just cannot be translated into English. De André was very "Italian-ish", he never loved the "American" way to entertainment. So his songs are deep with meaning and "heavy". It should come as a dramatic surprise to my reader then, that I actually don't like his songs.
Please do not misunderstand my meaning.
I do not like his songs does not equal to I do not perceive their artistic value.
I am very aware they are artistically significant, way more than other pop songs I enjoy. The problem with his songs, for me, is that I am not "resonant" with the form De André chose for his art to be expressed. He sang with a guitar and little more, in form of ballads. The music itself was "unimportant" to him, a mere "decoration" of the lyrics, which were the real "chest" containing the full value of the song (I use the past because De André is dead, although he kept singing until the end of his career in the 90's). To De André, it was poetry in Italian language the mean to convey a message, and music was the "addition" to have poetry break through the mass market and reach the masses. I am quite sensitive to words and poems, but not enough to appreciate a song whose main element is its lyrics. I can actually appreciate a song without understanding the lyrics. I find a Chinese song (a classic of the 70's called "Wang Bu Liao") absolutely charming, and I have only a vague idea of what a few of its lines could mean. Words are beautiful to me, but sound is better. The same lyrics by De André, with a completely different music, would make my ideal song. Then of course, I would not call it "pop song" anymore for the simple fact that I use the expression "pop-song" to define "American", light-entertainment industrial products. This is not to say that all pop songs are industrial products, but rather that I have chosen that expression to define them.

Here comes then, the meaning of what I said when I stated that one has to be "resonant" with the form of expression the Communicator (Artist) has chosen to convey his message. I can understand very well the message hidden in De André's beautiful poem-lyrics. But when it comes to emotional impact, his music has a limited effect on me. I enjoy his lyrics a lot more when they are written on a piece of paper, where I can read them aloud following the metrics and the actual beauty of their natural sound in Italian, un-hindered by the annoying music intended to support them. But that of course, is not the aim of De André.

What I tried to say in this whole post in the end is that we can all recognize Art when we find it, but there certainly is *one* form of art that makes your inner chords vibrate. Cultivating that form of art, pursuing it and enjoying it as much as possible, provides immense pleasure. It is up to my readers to search and find the Art they feel most resonant with; but certainly, whatever my reader's choice, anybody's life is greatly enriched by the wonders of Art.

Post Number Five: The Lightness of Being Is Less Bearable Than Many Believe

2005-02-27T22:46:00.000+01:00

This is my last post for this weekend and I would like to dedicate it to the Unbearable Lightness of Being once more. Compared to my previous posts, this one will differ in that it won't be long. To achieve its purpose, in fact, it will require only a few words. So, I will surprise my reader making an attempt to be coincise.

I am very sensitive to lightness, and therefore perceive it easily. Most people in the world are accustomed to it, they don't notice it. But it's there nonetheless and it causes uneasiness. We live in a world where nothing apparently really matters. Nobody really cares about great political ideals, deep ethical values, philosophy, or the inner spiritual beacon of Religion (as opposed to the superficial set of dogmata displayed by most established Churches, especially Christian). "Get a life", "Have fun", "You think too much" are very common statements in our world. In one of my future posts I will talk about a girl that was the ultimate embodiment of lightness, and sentences like that were the norm in her mouth. Nothing really matters. It's the way capitalistic/consumistic society is meant to be. You think that happiness will be achieved through the possess of a specific item, gadget, or other object you have seen on advertising, or by having a nice, sexy body with flat abs. You probably believe that thinking too much is dangerous, and that it's better to let the loud thumps of that trendy disco dumbfold your mind and daze you. Perhaps it's better to get a pill of ecstasy or two, dance the whole night, have sex with someone you don't know that you picked up at the disco and forget about the world. Nothing, really, matters.

But this lack of meaning, this superficiality, this absence of importance, will crush you. Human beings have innate instinct that calls for a meaning. Sooner or later, whether we are aware of it or not, this great void around us will beg for something to fill it up. You will realize that although you got a nice job, you are making money and you can buy the gadgets you like, and you go to the disco every night, nonetheless you are not satisfied. Something will still be missing. Some people don't know what it is, they just know that something's wrong. They turn to superstitions, they believe aliens are out there to abduct us, they think crystals harness great powers; or they turn to religion (without the capital R), and stick to dogmata that are as empty as the void they are unconsciously trying to fill in. It is a destiny to which most of the modern generation is condemned.
I think I have been lucky to realize what caused my uneasiness. There are still many things that do not really matter, and it's good they exist, as long as I know that they are irrelevant. Most of what we have learnt to like is ephemeral, irrelevant. Unimportant. It doesn't fill the void you feel. You will always have that annoying impression that something is missing.
Light things are very hard to bear. Emptiness is vain. Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas, "Emptiness of Emptiness and Everything is Emptiness".
There are things that matter because they are heavy. They are dense with meaning. People fought for them, died for them. There are words that evoke millennia of civilization, concepts that are worth pondering, thinking. Democracy, Ethics, Freedom, Art, Literature, Idealism, Philosophy, Tradition, Culture. The last one, Culture, is the word that sums them all up. It doesn't matter where your brain will find the most intriguing spark. What matters is that these things really mean something. They are the contrary of our civilization. They have been with us throughout our history, but now they are perceived as a burden. They aren't a burden, if not in the sense that they are heavy. They actually are what we are missing. They are that Weight that would make the Lightness of Being a bit more tolerable. They have been removed because they are disliked by those in charge, but they have left an emptiness that we humans struggle to fill, and there is nothing, in the ephemeral nature of our world, that can replace them. "Getting a life" in an world of vain entertainment can be really, really not fun any more.

Post Number Four: Mae Govannen. Im Arwen.

2005-02-27T17:43:00.000+01:00

Of my innate sensitivity to Sound, and my love for Music

Yes, you have the right impression about the title of this post. It's written in Sindarin, the elven language created by Tolkien. I will immediately provide you with a translation: "Well met. I [am] Arwen". There is no verb to be in Sindarin, just as it happens in Russian. If you are interested in learning some Sindarin, please follow the link to the right, which will lead you to a comprehensive site about Tolkien's languages. Once again, I am referring to Tolkien in the title of my post, when the contents have nothing to do with him. In fact, this post will be about my own feelings about musical beauty. It will be very personal and introspective, and of a different quality compared to my previous posts. It will also dig into certain technicalities which I hope won't scare my readers away.
If you have seen the Lord of the Rings, you might have noticed that every now and then actors spoke in a language you couldn't understand without subtitles. That language was Sindarin. Probably you got the impression, despite the inability to understand it, that Sindarin sounded very beautiful to the ear. It is musical, harmonious, and sweet. When Liv Tyler for the first time speaks her line in Elvish, it seems that speech has turned into a song of innatural beauty. I am very fond of foreign languages and their sounds. I believe that in order to sense the beauty of a word, it's better to ignore its meaning: in fact, when the meaning of a speech is obscure, all that remains is the sound of it, and my mind can concentrate completely on it without the distraction of attaching a meaning to each word, and an idea to the speech. I am not advocating the primacy of beauty over the meaning of a text of course! I am using this literary metaphor to provide an example of what will come next.
Personally I find certain languages exceptionally beautiful to the ear, although I do not understand a word. Among the ones I have been exposed to and that I find most pleasant are Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Greek and Swedish. Then, there are the languages I do understand; in these cases, it's not just the sound of the words themselves that I like, but the structure of the grammar. I am of course very fond of the English language, or this Blog wouldn't be written in this idiom. Anyway, in terms of ponderous grammar and monumental architecture, my favorite language is most definitely Latin, closely followed by German. A sentence in Latin is sounding with dignity and seriousness. There is a ponderous power in the Latin language, as if the dullest of concepts acquired a millenary burden of wisdom and authority when expressed in the ancient idiom of Rome.
I will try to give an example. Take the following sentence:
"The things that are small for the great are minimal for the greatest."
it is actually a joke I have made up myself based on the fact that "The Greatest" translates into Latin as "Maximus", which is, in fact, my name in Latin. Now, note the same sentence in Latin:
"Quae sunt parva magnis, minima sunt Maximo."
To actually better perceive the atmosphere of this sentence, it should be written as it would be done by the Romans:
"QVAE SVNT PARVA MAGNIS, MINIMA SVNT MAXIMO"
The sound of this sentence, regardless of its meaning, has an intrinsic power that is completely missed in English. It is not a mere chance. Take this other example:
"...and to protect your own life, losing the reason to live". This is an excerpt from a long speech, and a sentence I am particularly in agreement with. It states that it is not worth to keep living if, to protect your own life, you give up your reason to live. It is a very Roman thing to say. In Latin it sounds:
"... et propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas."
Whether you perceive or not the different effect produced by the sound of this sentence when uttered in Latin is of scarce importance, because the sensitivity to sound and to languages is innate and not commonly shared by every human being. It is not a bad thing to lack it, and I am not chastising anyone for failing to see my point. As I said, this is going to be an introspective post. Therefore, if the reader wants to bear with me, I'll move on from languages to the next step, which brings us a bit closer to my chosen topic.

In front of colors I do not have the same sensitivity I think I possess for sounds. I realize that my inner chords are only touched in front of certain, quite clashy associations of colors. I fail to enjoy the intricacies of shades of green or brown. To me, the only collection of colors that somehow produces an effect on my inner self is the mixture of an intense blue, a shiny green, and a perfectly brilliant white. I naturally associate it with an ideal landscape with azure skies, high mountains topped with white snow, and intensely green, Scottish-like grass, descending in the distance into a blue ocean. Warm colors like red, orange and yellow give me a sense of dirt, of unease, as if they were sticky and oily like a stain of tomato on your tee. This means that I am instinctively unable to enjoy the nuances that others perceive, and probably it is the original root that makes me so uncapable to feel much in front of a painting (unless the painting in question displays blue, green, and white in the right proportions).
This is to say that each person has a peculiar sensitivity, an innate resonance (recently I came to love this word, "resonance") with certain particular sensorial stimulations. I am sure that while my sense of sound is way more trained and developed than the other senses, for other people the most intense experiences would come through sight, touch, taste or smell. I am now talking to those of you that naturally privilege the sense of hearing, because what I will type next will probably make little sense to anyone else. I can assure my readers that I feel the same disorientation whenever someone tries to tell me about the beauty of a painting.

Since my most significant emotional experiences are elicited by sounds, it comes quite naturally that the form of art I am most "resonant" with is Music. I am particularly fond of what is generally known as "classical" music. I don't like this definition. From a historical point of view "Classical" music is the collection of compositions created during the "Classical" age, which is the second half of the Eighteenth Century in Europe. So, composers like Bach, Haendel, Wagner, Debussy, Ravel, Tchajkovskij, Shostakovic or Dvorak should not be considered "Classical". None of these composers, in fact, lived nor created music in the "Classical" age. But it appears that in order to be understood, the expression "Classical Music" conveys the right concept, so I will use it with the only caveat that I deem it inappropriate.
As I said I have no sense for pictures. My taste for colors will sound dull and repetitive to someone more attuned with visual arts. To my ear, instead, it is what is commonly known as "pop music" to sound dull and repetitive. Not only it is extremely Light (and I don't tolerate its Lightness), but it lacks skill, fantasy and ultimately, beauty. I am referring, just to make the point very clear, to recreational music such as Britney Spears' pop songs, rap (all rap), hip-hop, disco-dance and so on. I am not referring to the Queen, Elton John or David Bowie. To me, the difference between these two groups is obvious, so I won't dig into it any further.
In one of my previous posts, I stated that the process of creating an artwork basically consists of
1. Acquiring an exceptional level of skill in one or more specific crafts as required
2. Using the learnt techniques to convey a message.
In order to understand a work of art, though, there must be a resonance between the technique used by the artist and your inner sensitivity. It is like speaking a language. If you want to understand the meaning you must understand the language first. So, it is necessary to find the specific craft intrinsically beautiful per se to really attempt an approach to a work of art created through that specific craft.
My instinctive love for sound is more inclined to be elicited and stirred up by a combination of sounds played together, or almost together (in the language of music they are called "chords" and "arpeggios", respectively), than by a disjointed sequence of sounds. In a very basical simplification, music is made of two elements: a Melody and a Harmony. For those who know little to nothing of the technicalities of music, when you are sitting in front of a campfire with your best friend playing the guitar for you, what you are singing is the Melody and what the guitarist is playing is the Harmony. Chords and Arpeggios are to be found in the Harmony, while the voice carries out the Melody (which is why usually the melody is "singable"). However beautiful a melody can be per se, I must admit that it is the harmony that supports it that makes my heart beat. Stripped of the harmony, a melody that would make me cry (and I am moved a lot by music) loses most of its grip on my soul. On the other hand, a harmony stripped of its melody can still retain a good deal of the mysterious magic that makes my heart beat. [Much should be said of the emotional effect I feel for different timbres, but I will intentionally skip this element because it would lead me too far]
A harmony is not simply one chord (although even one can be beautiful, as I will prove later), it is a sequence of chords and arpeggios (I admit I am over simplifying a very complicated matter, but I beg you to excuse me for this, because I am trying to convey a message to readers that most likely have little to no training in music). Different chords do not always sound well together, while others, for mysterious reasons, seem to be "meant" to follow one another. I remember I spent entire days mumbling over the same two chords again and again, pondering how beautifully they called to each other, how pleasant their succession sounded to my ear. If you have a keyboard, you can try this experiment. Try playing together the following notes: D, F, A, in this order, so that the D is the lowest note and the A the highest. What you just played is a D minor chord, and it's already beautiful per se if you can feel it. Now play it again but add a fourth note, D-F-A-C. Do you hear that wonderful collection of sounds? Does it move something in your inner self? Because to me, what you just played is pure delight. It is an "artificial seventh" as it is called, and it is very common in Bach's music.
Let's try another. Try playing the following chord: F, A, C, E (incidentally it appears to mean something!), and then the previous D-F-A-C. Do you hear how this chords seem to "call" for each other, as if they were "meant" to be in sequence? Again, feelings are very subjective and even those who are most sensitive to music will certainly perceive sounds in different ways. Perhaps a pure C major (C-E-G-C) is more pleasant to someone's ear than my artificial seventh. The simple presence of certain sounds in certain sequences in music is already enough to stir something into my heart that goes very close to passion. The right harmonic sequence (which should never be so dull to be reduced to just two chords of course) can, in the right moment, provide my heart with the same intense emotion felt when I am kissing a beautiful girl. Of course, harmony is meant to support a melody, and there are no words I can find to describe the beauty of the right melody accompanied by the right harmony. On the other hand, you can by now take for granted that the obsessive repetition of bass thumps, supporting the obsessive repetition of the same few, banal chords, intended to sustain the obsessively repetitive "melody" of a disco hit nauseates me. I don't even get to the point of disliking it for its Lightness, its lack of depth and meaning. It's nasty to the ear before being downright ephemeral.
It should be quite obvious then, that if pop music is not repetitive and it actually displays a rich and beautiful harmony supporting a tolerable melody, my ear won't fail to enjoy it. And in fact, I do like some pop music. As a mere example, I recently discovered a singer called Linda Eder. I have heard her singing only once and only one song, "Let Him Fly". I invite you to listen to it. The harmony supporting the melody is fairly enriched, especially in terms of timbre richness, and the melody moves like the waves of an ocean in a lovely crescendo supported by the amazing voice of this awesome singer. The final acuto comes as a cry of liberation, which is exactly the meaning of the lyrics which end on the words "let him fly". There is a lot in terms of instinctive pleasure that I feel when I hear this song. Nevertheless, I also have to admit that it lacks something.
Like all songs, this song is, well, "just a song". Its structure is beautiful, but very simple, it's emotionally quite powerful (to me), but it lacks a profound, hidden message. It is a wonderfully crafted empty gift box. Unluckily. That is not to say that I dislike it, because one can admire the skill of a crafter that decorates an empty box with great accuracy, but, sigh... it's short of something. A song by, say, Britney Spears, is a rough, poorly crafted, dull industrial plastic box. A song by, say, Linda Eder, or Freddie Mercury, or Lacuna Coil, is a nice display of reasonable skill with the techniques of the art called Music, and if one is as sensitive to sound as I am, it can touch a chord or two in one's inner self, like it does to me. But there's more with Art than just mastering a technique and get an emotional grip on the listener. Giving you an emotion is wonderful but not enough.
Here comes classical music. Classical music composers were all very skilled at creating harmonies and melodies. Obviously much more skilled than the authors of Britney Spears' songs, and probably more skilled than the authors of Let Him Fly as well. But whether they were skilled or not is not the point. The point is that they used this skill, they used those sounds that possess so much emotional power over my soul, to convey a hidden message. They worked like painters and poets, bending their skill to the needings of communication, transforming pure emotion into speech. Listening to Classical music is not as easy as listening to Britney Spears, although this is not necessarily the rule, but the emotional power it possesses, combined with the depth of its significance, provides an intensity of experience that I cannot feel in any other way. I hope that my words have induced some of the most musically inclined of you to pay more attention to sounds, but my purpose was just that of trying to express with words a turmoil of emotions that compares only to the feeling of hugging a woman or kissing a friend.
In a classic example, I would like to mention Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. It is written in C minor. This choice is already full of meaning. To those who are especially sensitive to sound, there is a humonguous difference between a melody played in C minor and THE SAME MELODY played, say, in D minor. The first one will we perceived as dramatic, the second will be tragic. Death is in D minor, Struggle is in C minor. Beethoven chose C minor because when he composed the Fifth Symphony he was trying to convey a specific message: a struggle against Destiny. As you probably know, Ludwig van Beethoven turned deaf when he was 27. There was no greater catastrophe for a composer than being a deaf. This is easily understood. It is also easily understood that Beethoven wasn't too happy about it. In fact, he felt a turmoil of emotions in his heart that almost led him to suicide, if it weren't for his immense strength of will. I am profoundly in awe of this man. This man, Ludwig van Beethoven, had a depth of thought and a willpower that I can only dream of. He was the ultimate contrary of modern "Light" ideals, those of a person devoted to inane amusement and ephemeral (another word I am fond of these days) entertainment (the mantra of consumism). Beethoven, to say it in very modern terms had BALLS, a lot of them. How do I know? Not only because he did not kill himself at all, but kept composing his music regardless of his handicap, becoming probably the greatest composer of all time. I know it because he said it in his music. He stated it with all the power he could extract from the tools he had learnt to master as a musician. The famous first notes of the Fifth Symphony, the repeated sounds, they are not only powerful and beautiful to the ear (mine at least). They mean something that transcends their mere emotional effect. It's Destiny. Can you hear it? Destiny knocking at your door. In the first movement, the characteristic construction of the symphony, which required two "themes", two "melodies" that would follow each other, is transformed by Beethoven into a battle, a dramatic struggle, a heroic combat between a man's aspiration to happiness and the dramatic destiny that attempts to destroy this very happiness. He's telling us that if we really want to pursuit happiness we must stand in the face of Destiny itself. We must fight for it, we must struggle. It's not something to take for granted (as our epoch seems to believe). Listen through the Symphony. Try to feel the intensity of the emotional fight that Beethoven is trying to portray until an immensely powerful crescendo explodes in the Fourth Movement, which is written in a monumental C major, the most optimistic of all tones. How does that movement start? Three times C major: C major, C major, C MAJOR, GODDAMMIT! I have struggled and fought and suffered to win over my unfortunate destiny and I am darn HAPPY now! I want to SHOUT my happiness, to hell with Destiny, I have WON! How else can you describe the immensity of the fanfare of the fourth movement? Can you feel how PONDEROUS Beethoven is, how hard gained happiness is for him? There is so much more than just the emotional impact of music in this composition, regardless of the beauty of sounds themselves...!! I am feeling my heart beating faster at the sole memory of the fifth symphony, go figure listening to it!
I will close this post here, for I have said all I could about this topic. I hope I have communicated at least in part the emotional effect that music has over me, and once again the reader might have noticed how important it is for me to perceive weight in what entertains me. There's a reason if this Blog is called "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" after all. Now you all will excuse me, but I can't help rushing to listen to music.

[After reading my post again, I realized I completely skipped another very important element that adds to the emotional grip music has over me. That is the architecture of music. In the attempt to simplify things I ended up forgetting what is probably one of the most significant effects achievable by a well constructed composition. In fact, of all forms of musical creation I especially favor the fugue. It is a monumental construction of humonguous proportions, especially when it is well written, but the technicalities are so complex that I won't attempt to describe them here in a few words. It will suffice to say that beyond the beauty of chords and melodies, which please my ear first, my brain finds indicible delight in following the intricacies of a complex music; this is not limited of course to Bach's fugues. Examples of wonderful musical architecture are to be found in Wagner's masterpieces, in the symphonies of Mahler, and in the breathtaking orchestrations by Ravel. It is simply impossible, I finally realise, to express in simple words the various layers of pleasure that are elicited in my heart and brain by good music. I can only say as a final note, that in order to satisfy me to the fullest a music must compy to the following criteria:
1. it must possess a rich and complex harmony
2. it must be graced by an appropriate melody
3. it must display a variety of timbres in adequate proportions
4. it must be constructed in a complicated and monumental architecture
5. it must convey a profound message
The pop music that I appreciate, in my opinion complies to the first 2 criteria, rarely including the third. Almost never the fourth. The fifth simply turns pop music into another genre]

Post Number Three: There's More With This Hobbit Than Meets The Eye

2005-02-27T00:26:00.000+01:00

Of the hidden meaning of things, and of Art.

I am a fan of the Lord of the Rings. In fact, I have a fixation with the Lord of the Rings, which describes my attitude towards this novel more accurately. When I started off opening this Blog, I wanted to name it in Sindarin. This is the name of an artificial language invented by a Professor of Philology of the University of Oxford, whose name is John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Tolkien is known worldwide for being the author of the first, and by large and far still the best, fantasy novel of modern literature. Recently, a Newzealander movie director called Peter Jackson turned this masterpiece into an equally breath-taking collection of films. I have seen the three movies eight times already. I especially like the extended editions because they last longer. I have read the book only twice instead, and only in Italian, but I will soon read it again in English.
I hope Professor Tolkien's son Cristopher, and New Line Cinema alike, will excuse me if I dare borrowing a line from the Lord of the Rings to title this post of mine. It seems that this people take copyright issues very seriously. I think anyway that copyright laws concede the right to quote.
I have chosen this particular line because it perfectly suits the topic of this morning's thought of mine, although it is purely incidental that it is a Tolkien's quote.

I recently saw a movie starring Miss J. Styles. It was a romantic comedy of scarce value, deeply infected by too much lightness for my taste. Anyway, my instinctive attitude to search for in-depth meanings of things led me to note an important detail that turned a lamp on in my brains.
In one of the scenes of this poorly assembled collection of insipid film shoots, a blonde guy who happened to be a Prince of Denmark in disguise attempted to teach the meaning of a Sonet by Shakespeare to a typical American schoolgirl from Wisconsin. I will not mention the blatant inaccuracy displayed in portraying both Denmark and European aristocracy, not to mention my continent's customs and culture. I can excuse the director because I know he was just trying to film a tasteless comedy targeted to American teens well fed with pink clouds and bubbling floating red hearts. But the very scene I mentioned above revealed a great truth. The dull teen played by Miss Styles was unable to perceive the hidden meaning of the words written by Shakespeare. She required the assistance of someone else, to discover the ultimate truth beneath the surface of a poem.
This rang an alarm bell in my head. If the director portrayed such a horrifying scene, it means that he experienced the existence of people that fail to understand things don't really mean what they seem to mean. There are people that think there is Nothing More With This Hobbit But What Meets The Eye.
Maybe it's because the society has come to appreciate ephemeral superficiality so intensely, that whatever lurks beneath the surface will remain hidden to most. In this post I intend to tell the reader, if he or she wishes to bear with me, that more often than not things do not just mean what they superficially appear to mean.
This truth is of capital importance. Failure in perceiving the hidden meaning of things not only precludes the possibility of fully enjoying poetry and literature, not mentioning paintings and music, but also leads to the inability to read behind the lines spoken by those in charge (of you).
First and foremost, it is critical to understand that the surface, the appearance of things, is insignificant. It can be beautiful, but carries little value per se. It is exactly the lack of an inner, hidden meaning of things that distinguishes the unbearably light to the pleasantly ponderous (the allitteration of "p" is intentional as I perceive "p" as a heavy sound, opposed to "l" which is quite ephemeral). The beautifully crafted box of my first post provides a perfect example. When a present for one's birthday turns out being a wonderful, yet empty, gift box, it seldom provides pleasure. In front of a closed case, the first thing a child does is to open it, to see what it conceals. It is naturally human to be curious. And it is really frustrating to realize that a closed box contains nothing.
Literature, poetry, music... in one word, "Art", is actually a box. Forget whatever your bohémienne neighbour who defines himself as an artist ever told you about Art. Before the corruption of the twentieth century, before the world was contaminated by Lightness, and before Art turned into art without the capital A, an Artist was a Communicator. A person who used specific tools and techniques to communicate a message, a meaning. Art is a form of communication. Anybody can, with the right training, learn techniques to, say, compose a music, paint a picture, or write a poem. But not anybody is an Artist, regardless of how well he or she masters the tools. In fact, the techniques of an Artist are the means through wich the Communicator tells us something. It really does not matter what is being communicated. It could be a celebration of the Might of your Civilization, an attempt to express the turmoil of passion within your heart when you think of your boyfriend (or girlfriend), a message about the Word of God, or a description of the pleasure felt when eating a cake... What will ultimately make your artwork will be how beautifully you concealed your message beneath the surface of your work, by skillfully using the techniques you have learnt to master so well.
It goes without saying that watching just the surface of an artwork, in awe of the technical ability of the author, without perceiving or grasping what the artist was trying to say, equals to being unable to understand an artwork. I for one do not understand paintings. It seems that there is a sort of "incomunicability" between visual arts and music. I perceive with instinctive ease the inner meaning of a Symphony by Tchajkovskij, but in front of a painting I struggle to understand what it was meant to really portray. So I don't demand for my reader to be able to understand the hidden meaning of any work of art. Being able to perceive a hidden meaning is often the result of an education and of genetic predisposition. It suffices to realize that a hidden meaning is there, and then we can humbly confess to be unable to grasp it, because the technique used to convey it is not resonant with us.
It is typical of our era of Lightness, to believe that what counts the most in an artwork is the emotional impact it has on the viewer. This emotional effect is actually the result of two combined truths contained in an artwork:
1. the hidden meaning
2. the tricky technique used to convey it.
Needless to say, failing to perceive that the emotional effect is but a trick used by the artist to make you stop in front of his work and pay more attention to it, equals to break the link between you and the artist, ultimately preventing you from grasping the message the artist was trying to convey.
"This painting is beautiful because it makes my heart beat faster"
While there is nothing inherently wrong or bad with this sentence, it only makes sense, and pays the required tribute to the artist, if it is paired with a deeper understanding of what the painting meant. Besides, once the inner meaning is perceived, one's heart is likely to beat even faster.
As I said I don't understand paintings. So I do not represent a good example in this field.
On the other hand I think I can fairly understand literature, poetry to a lesser extent, and certainly music to a much greater level.
The difference between an artwork and a beautifully crafted item is precisely the hidden meaning. A vase, however beautiful, however cleverly designed, regardless of the awesome skill displayed by the crafter, remains a vase. It is not intended to convey a hidden meaning. It is a tool that serves a specific purpose. The crafter might have achieved a level of skill equal, or even superior to that of an artist, but still, the result of his work is not an artwork. This happens because the crafter really meant nothing else but to create a tool.
Too often, in the modern era, we use the word artist to describe a good crafter. It is not enough to master a technique in order to become an artist. It is necessary to have something to say first, and to be able to bend the techniques you mastered to the message you are trying to convey.
This is, needless to say, a Lightness vs Weight issue. The inner meaning provides what Kundera would define "Weight". The lack of it makes something "Light". The love for lightness is the greatest plague that ever struck humankind.
Words can be used to create artworks. You can mean what you are saying, and then you are a good crafter, or you can wonderfully say something totally different from what you mean, but that hints to something else which is what you really meant. That is Art.

In the movie with Miss Styles, the American teen thought Shakespeare meant nothing more than what he was saying. Then the Bard's word made little sense, they were, yes, nice to the ear and strangely vague about the sun and the clouds, but they carried no value. But the Prince in disguise told her there could be a hidden meaning, and although the movie turned Shakespeare's words into distilled romance, the director didn't fail to grasp the truth I tried to tell here.

This is not the place to dig further into the meaning of specific music and poems, but it will suffice to say that even the Lord of the Rings is a forest of hidden meanings. There is much more with The Lord of the Rings than meets the eye. Next time you read a book, or a poem, or listen to a symphony, or watch a painting, depending on which art is most resonant with you, try asking yourself "what else is there here?". It takes time, and training, to finally be able to grasp the hidden meaning of things, but once one achieves this result, a new world opens to one's eyes. And the Unbearable Lightness of the modern ephemeral world will become even more intolerable. Guaranteed.

There's more with this Hobbit than meets the eye.

Post Number Two: Common Sense Is Your Worst Enemy

2005-02-26T22:18:00.000+01:00

Of Common Sense as the Opium of the Peoples, and of why I don't believe in God.

Warning: the following posts is highly critical of Religion, Catholicism, Activist believers and the Church. Be aware of this before reading further.

I do not believe in God.

This simple statement is often cause of major concern for some people. Italy hosts a small enclave known as "the Vatican", the last remnants of a once larger nation, ruled by a man called Pope. What is a Pope? In purely political terms, a Pope is the absolute leader of a theocracy, and there happens to be only one absolute theocracy in the world: the Vatican. The Pope of the Vatican is also the leader of a Religion called Roman Christian Catholicism. There are many sects of Christian Religion, and they generally differ from each other in a number of ways. The Catholic version of Christianity is the most common Religion of Italy. According to geographical maps, Catholics are most commonly found in other countries like France, Spain, Portugal, and especially Ireland and Poland. Catholic Priests have been very active in Africa and South America too. In fact, one of the core beliefs of the Catholic version of Christianism is that non-Catholic believers should be converted to Catholicism.
The Church has been very effective in converting people to its Religion, but not to the same degree everywhere in the world. Italy is one of the countries where the Catholic Church had the greatest influence on the society; in present-day Italy, a majority of the population is Catholic, and although only about half the people actually attends the Mass on Sundays, a belief in God is still widely spread and usually taken for granted.
As being in contrast with the cultural mainstream seems to me my trademark, there should be little wonder that I do not believe in God, but still some people look at my "lack of faith" as something odd and very peculiar.
I can assure everybody here that a lot of people does not believe in God. Really. Personally I know some really cool, charming and witty girls that happen not to believe in any God or Religion whatsoever. I don't know why each non-believer has chosen not to believe, but I know why I have. This post will mainly address the problems of faith, Religion, and belief.

Let's be frank. Some people believe in God because everyone else does. It's like being part of a group, and humans are born with the need to belong to a party of some sort. Being a non-believer means to be an outcast, with all the dire consequences this might bring upon you. If you have read my first post, you should infer that I repute this kind of homologated religion downright annoying. It implies that a person hasn't even wondered why he cares so much about God. Such people normally shrug off at any inquisitive interlocutor and make no effort at trying to understand what's behind their own behavior.
"Why do you believe in God?"
"Oh well, why not?" or "Mum told me God is Good" or even "Everybody does!" are not acceptable answers. And to be precise, such answers aren't (should not be) acceptable by the Church either. It's a pity that more often than not the Ministers of God are more concerned with the number of their parishioners rather than with their convinction.
In the same way, it is equally annoying to receive the same answers from non-believers. There has to be a specific reason to be a believer or otherwise. The lack of a reason is precisely what gives me that sense of intolerable unease that I refer to as "unbearable lightness of being".
It is necessary for any believer of non believer alike, if one cares to provide one's self with a reason, to stop for a moment and erase whatever has been up to now accepted on the basis of common sense. Common sense is your Worst Enemy. I cannot overstate this sentence. Common sense is what the majority of people gets accustomed to accept because at a certain point of somebody's life, it appeared quite obvious that things were in a certain way. It appears quite obvious that a shiny yellow metal is gold but more often than not it isn't. It appears quite obvious that men and chimps are different but in fact they share 97% of the genetic pool. It appears quite obvious that your neighbor is a good fellow, but normally this is what people say before learning that their neighbor is a serial killer.
Common sense is a nice way to define Intellectual Laziness. It is much simpler to take for granted what appears to be superficially obvious than digging into a matter in depth and perhaps discover than what seemed so natural is actually the other way round. The majority of people, needless to say, are Intellectually Lazy. It is not their fault, in general. Every society works hard to achieve the result of suppressing the working of the individual mind, because inquisitive minds are extremely dangerous. They challenge the commonly shared beliefs, and consequently challenge those in charge. And I would like to remind the reader that those in charge happen to really enjoy being in charge (of you). Really. They like it, they love to pull your strings like a puppet and make you do whatever they want, like spending your hard gained money on fancy gadgets you won't ever need, work without questioning your life conditions and, why not, believe in what they tell you to believe. Those in charge of you get a lot in terms of wealth, power, and self-esteem thanks to the fact that you do not question them. Medieval Kings in Europe stated their right to rule derived from the Will of God and to stress this point they let the Pope crown them (incidentally the Pope gained quite a deal of power over who was supposed to rule whom thanks to this habit). It was common sense that induced most of the population to believe the word of the King, and it was in the interest of the king to let it stay this way.
Common sense is your worst enemy.
If you believe in God and you don't know why, you are affected by common sense.
Now, the first thing a person should normally do is to erase his mind completely. Most philosophers commit a serious mistake when they fail to do so. If you talk to a philosopher (one of my friends has a Ph.D in Philosophy) you might notice that he has a reason for everything, (which is good), but for some strange mishap, no two philosophers seem to think in the same way. How comes? If rational thinking is objective, and if the philospher is trying to be rational, shouldn't he be led to the same conclusions of every other philosopher? Logics are, well, logic, they cannot lead to various different results depending on who's using them. Unless, of course, they are not objective. Now, it is my strong convinction that many philosphers start off from something they assume true. They actually already know where they want their reasoning to lead them, and then build their entire philosophies as a monumental justification of something they would hold true nonetheless, although they use the newly acquired motivations to uphold their convinction more effectively in a debate. In this sense, I consider philosphers weak reasoners, in the sense that their beautifully constructed arguments carry little objective weight: their conclusions were drawn beforehand, and all the machinations of their minds, regardless of the charm they possess, would never lead a philosopher to disbelief his original tenets.
A philospher of this kind is not Intellectually Lazy, but his conclusion are subjective. This fails to excite me, for I perceive that there is an objective Truth in things and that philosophers completely miss it.
So, the first step is to get rid of what you deem right. Take for granted that what seems right could actually be completely wrong. Maybe you think it's right because the society wants you to believe so. Maybe it's ultimately wrong. If you start off from what you already believe you won't get rid of Common Sense, which is the enemy we are trying to fight off.
Once upon a time, I was a believer. Really. I believed in God, prayed in the morning and thought Jesus died and resurrected from the dead. I also believed in Satan as the embodiment of evil, and I believed many other fanciful things I won't mention here. So, I can assure you all that I am not like any philospher who tries to justify his beliefs a posteriori.
Like many others in this country, at a certain point I asked myself, "Why do I believe in God?"
I had no answer that could satisfy me. Remember how I cannot tolerate Lightness. I do not shrug off at such questions.
I wondered for example, how could there be so many religions in the world, if the Catholic Roman was the only true one. According to the local priest, the difference between the Catholic Religion and any other religion (including all other Christianisms) is that Catholicism is inspired by God himself, while others lack this enlightment. Personally I never saw God in the act of inspiring Catholicism so this answer was quite dissatisfying. According to the priests, anyway, the answers were to be found in a book called "Bible". I took this book and read it through.
The Bible is a collection of various books that tell a story, as seen from the point of view of a Middle-Eastern people called "the Jews". According to what the priests said, this story was the Word of God, and it contained the ultimate Truth. This is a brief summary of the ultimate Truths contained in the Bible.
God created Adam and Eve from clay and blowed a soul in their body. He considered the two human beings the best achievement of his entire creation and gave them the garden of Eden, a land of peace and joy they had the right to live into. Nonetheless Eve, inspired by a snake. disobeyed God's only order (not to eat a certain fruit from a certain tree) and she even had the nerve to induce Adam to commit the same Sin. As a consequence to this disobedience God cursed Adam and Eve and all his descendants for eternity. Then humans moved on to live on an imperfect land only to be later wiped off by a Deluge, when God's wrath fall upon Earth and killed every single living being with the sole exception of Noah, his sons, and a number of animals. Among other Truths contained in the Bible I like to remember:
1. The rain of fire on two cities that disobeyed the rule of God (that is, they enjoyed sex)
2. The turning of a woman into a statue of salt for watching the above mentioned slaughter
3. The siege of a city (Jericho) whose mighty walls were toppled by Joshua (with the help of God) and whose entire population was slaughtered (including animals and trees) by order of God
4. The story of Job, a man plagued by all known and unknown diseases, left alone in a desert by God for Him to witness how a man reduced to a wreck would still pay his tribute to the Only True God
5. The story of Moses and the Jews, enslaved by the Egyptians in the face of God who plagued Egypt with locusts, frogs, blood, and finally by killing the children. On this occasion God ordered Moses to kill a number of lambs and use their blood to mark the doors of Jews, so that the Angel of Death would recognize them and spare their life while he was on a killing spree through the Egyptian kingdom.
6. The story of Babel, a place where humans meant to build a tower tall enough to reach the kingdom of God. Apparently God was quite sure they were going to succeed since he chose to confuse their languages and prevent them from continuing their job
...and so on.
Is it me, or there is something wrong here? God the Almighty, the embodiment of Good, the all-loving God that creates the Universe is described in the Bible basically as indulging in genocide and massacre of children with the same non-chalance displayed by a kid killing ants.
Then there was this Jesus Christ person. Now, he seemed to speak another language. No more slaughtering, no more sacrifice and lots of love. Incidentally Jesus Christ never mentioned any of the characteristic dogmata of the Catholic church. In fact, Jesus protested doing business in the Temple, saved the life of a prostitute, and never really chastised anyone. Hello? Is it me again, or there is a number of Christian activists out there that are not doing much to save prostitutes, but criminalize abortion and advocate death penalty? Death penalty? They reconcile the word of Jesus Christ with Death penalty? Really amazing.
My most obvious conclusion was that the Bible is one of the many similar books we find in every culture, in many ways quite worse than many. It's gross, full of violence and blood, genocide and slaughter. It's obviously written by someone who was accustomed to violence, and probably this is no wonder since life in the Middle East was quite harsh. It's quite harsh even now after all.
Anyway there was no hint in the Bible that made me think it was written by God, or that it contained any Truth. I could as well have taken the epic of Gilgamesh and state it contains the ultimate Truth. There's no reason to believe that the Bible should be inspired by God and the Coran shouldn't. Why the Bible and not the Edda (an Icelandic myth of Viking origin)? Why not the Veda? Why not the Shinto tradition, or the Aztech myth? Why not the Roman and Greek gods after all? They weren't so inclined to genocide at least.
So, I do not believe in God, certainly not in the God of the Bible, and having no reason to believe in any other specific God in particular, I abstain from believing. I find this the healthiest choice. I have some sympathy for the nordic myth and I like to carry the Hammer of Thor (Mjölnir) hung to my neck, but it's more of a fanciful habit than a religious belief.
Later in my life I have turned my attention to Buddhism. Now, this particular set of beliefs is very resonant with my inner self, although I see no reason to believe in reincarnation.
Among the things the Dalai Lama have said, there is one I am quite in agreement with. I will now try to paraphrase it. A true Religion is not a set of dogmata and exterior habits, but a subjective expression of the inner "spiritual" needs of a human being, because it happens that for some reason, most humans (not all of them) feel a call to spirituality. In this sense, each human being has a peculiar subjective need, because we are born unique, despite the efforts put out by the society to suppress this uniqueness. Some religions are particularly resonant with the needs of a specific person, while another might turn out more suitable for someone else. But the ultimate purpose of a religion is that of fulfilling the needs of a specific believer. As such, it exists within the person and not without. I am now very tolerant with the beliefs of my religious peers, as long as I perceive them as their own. On converse, I am very aware that religion is a powerful tool that can be misused by malevolent men (usually dressed in black) to control people, and deprive them of their right to think.
In my future posts, I will also address themes like Euthanasia, Abortion, Death Penalty, Sex, and even Human Cloning. In all cases I will never resort to Religion, in particular not to the Christian Religion. While a human being has the right to choose not to abort a child for his own religious beliefs, I scorn at those dictators and fascists that preposterously have the arrogance to force their own subjective, irrational religious opinion upon others, and in particular I will accept no attempt made by any such bigots to strip me and the rest of society of our right to think and act freely, unfettered by their intellectual laziness, by their arrogance, and most of all by the arrogance of a supernational association known as "Catholic Church", which I consider but a cluster of brain-washers that never really cared to read and learn the word of the man on the cross they display in their churches. A man who once saved the life of a prostitute.

Post Number One: The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

2005-02-26T00:26:00.000+01:00

Of introducing the reader to the spirit of my thoughts.

It is generally assumed that each epoch is marked by what is perfectly described by the German word zeitgeist, a word that unluckily lacks an appropriate translation in other languages, and that I can approximate with the expression "spirit of the time". It is an impalpable but nonetheless very real essence of each one of the many subsequent eras of human history on this small rock we call "Earth". In precisely the same way each epoch possesses a zeitgeist, so each person's thoughts, I am convinced, are defined by a unique geist, a "spirit" (please note that the German geist shares the same roots with the English ghost). Most people tend anyway to uniform their own thinking to that of the society they live into, and by doing so they strengthen the spirit of the society itself, in what is known as a positive feedback, a loop that feeds itself endlessly. Because we must not forget that a society is a collection of individuals, and its common sense derives from that of the individuals that constitute it. On the other hand, a collection of individuals becomes a new singular being, in the same way a collection of cells apparently independent from one another happen to become a human being. So, being part of a society implies being shaped by it, as much as bringing one's own uniqueness into a society implies enriching it.
Some societies acquire a strong power over the individuals that compose them, and in modern world it is quite the norm that the specific indivuality of a human being is erased by the society through what I call intellectual brutality, a form of brute force that attempts to smooth out the edges of difference and transform unique beings in extensions of the society. This form of brutality is what endangers the survival of the society the most, but I will dig further into this specific matter later on in my thoughts, because in this moment it would take us too far from the precise purpose of this first entry in my newly created "blog".
I am one of those individuals who oppose resistance to the intellectual brutality of the society I live into. I live in a boot-shaped country called Italy, or Italia in my own native language (and I'd like to catch this occasion to apologize for the inadequacy of my English which happens to be not my mothertongue, unluckily). Italy is part of a relatively small continent normally referred to as Europe, which is also generally considered the Cradle of Western civilization. On the other hand, these names, I believe, are generally misinterpreted as if they defined something real and concrete, rather than ideas. The place we refer to as Italia is not divided by the rest of the world by anything real. An alien looking down from a spaceship on low orbit, would only see land and sea, and nothing geographically evident would induce him or her to believe that Italy is a different place from France. On the other hand, human beings living in Italy have developed their own social common sense, their social geist which differs from that of the human beings living in France. This difference, however superficial and of scarce importance in terms of distinguishing a French from an Italian individual, is taken very seriously by many humans. One of the most important characteristics of the Italian social geist of the late twentieth-early twentyfirst centuries is the intensity of its brutality against the the individual uniqueness of its constituents. This translates into a massive campaign to uniform each person to the whole, boycotting any form of cultural and intellectual difference. Most of my readers might find a reflection of their own condition in this description of the place called Italy, but I am convinced, after traveling to places that carry different names (France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Scotland, United States of America, Switzerland...) that the effort put out by the Italian society against its individuals to erase their uniqueness is more intense than that achieved by other societies. This means that it takes a greater effort to be unique in this place than it would suffice elsewhere in the world. This is not to say that there aren't other countries where the intellectual brutality is more effective than here, but rather than most of you who live in any of the countries I listed above, I believe, thrive in a less brutal environment.
Among the most important features of the Italian society, there is a rather grotesque dependance on Lightness. I catch at last the occasion to tell every reader that the title of my blog, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", is borrowed by the title of a magnificent book by Milan Kundera, a Czech writer, which I strongly suggest you all to read as soon as you can. With the word Lightness, I refer precisely to what Kundera meant in his book. Assuming that not all the visitors of my blog ever had a chance to read it, I will provide my interpretation of Kundera's thought.
Lightness, as opposed to Weight, is the "emptiness", or better, the "superficiality" of Being. Being is intended as one's "Life", "Essence", although such words describe the concept with great inaccuracy. We live in a world, and I live more specifically in a society, which considers the lack of "Weight" a positive thing. Consider the ephemeral nature of our most popular forms of entertainment: TV shows, discos, pop music, alcoholics... What do such things have in common? Basically, the lack of "depth", the absence of "content". Take one of those Reality Shows that receive so much appreciation from the public. Is there any ethical value in a Big Brother episode? Is there any room for ethics, politics, philosophy in any of our entertainment forms? I am ready to bet that most readers here would raise an eyebrow and wonder what kind of obvious statement I am making here, for what kind of entertainment would succeed in its scope if it had any philosophical, political, ethical value to be pondered about (please note the word ponder, from the Latin ponderare, " to weight"). Entertainment has to be light. Right?
Not really. It is actually part of a zeitgeist, whether to consider entertainment as light vs. heavy. In the Nineteenth century, for example, the entertainment provided by the music of Beethoven was anything but "light". Beethoven thought that heavy, ponderous thoughts were entertaining, and lack of depth wasn't. It's not something specifically limited to Ludwig van Beethoven (whose music, by the way, I strongly suggest you to listen), but it's how the European society felt in those decades. Lightness, or lack of depth, has come from the United States, where it marks the definition of entertainment. I believe it is an outcome of a generally poor social backgound in philosophy and other "humanities", as they call them, typical of certain areas of the United States (which happen to be a large and vast country where no norm is such throughout the nation). Italy, and its society, has been intensely affected by this lack of depth, and it's lost its grip on "Weight", on everything that implies depth of content.
Lightness, states Milan Kundera, this ephemeral nature of our living, can become tougher to bear than the heaviest of rocks. I am not here trying to write a review of Kundera's book, so I will not dig any further in his ideas, but will rather state my own.
I have always felt an inner uneasiness with the society around me, and I only recently discovered that what caused my unease was that I was unable to bear the Lightness of Italian Being. To me, Lightness is a negative concept. It is not resonant with my inner self. It is too empty, like a beautifully crafted gift box that contains nothing. Therefore, my thoughts on various issues, which I will post later in what little spare time I still have at my hands, will be better understood if the reader will keep in mind that I need weight, for I cannot bear the Lightness of Being.
This introduction should have by now achieved one of two outcomes:
1. The reader has fled in terror, rushing back to ephemeral forms of entertainment and ascribing me among the dangerously insane to be avoided like plague;
2. The reader is resonant with my thoughts, and perhaps has even perceived the undescribable effect of the Lightness of being and realised it nauseates him or her.

In the first case, I presume the reader hasn't come to this point so I shouldn't spend words on him or her.
In the second case, you are welcome to share your thoughts with me, comment this and my future posts, and even express disagreement with them.
I close this rather long first entry by wishing any of my readers a good day and sending a warm invitation to come back in the future. Goodbye for now.