Eseul unui câștigător al premiului Nobel
Pentru ca în însemnarea anterioară am făcut referire la 'umor de calitate', nu m-am putut abÈ›ine din a face o comparaÈ›ie cu umorul È™i divertismentul zilelor noastre.
AÈ™a am ajuns la eseul lui Mario Vargas Llosa, "La civilización del espectáculo", document în care autorul face o analiză dură a societății contemporane. Nu îmi place în mod special scriitorul Vargas Llosa, dar, fără a mă considera puritan, poate doar demodat, ader la unele din opiniile sale.
Citez (într-o traducere aproximativă) câteva fragmente dintr-un articol în spaniolă, al publicaÈ›iei Letraslibres.com:
"The civilization of the show [...] I think this is the best way to define the civilization of our time. What do I mean by civilization of the show? [...]of a world in which the first in the current value table and the universal passion is occupied by entertainment, to have fun, to escape boredom."
"Thus, both systematic and callous, have fun, avoid boredom, avoid what disturbs, worries and anxiety, became, for social sectors increasingly large, the top to the bottom of the social pyramid, a generational mandate That Ortega y Gasset called "the spirit of our time"[...]".
"In the civilization of the show is normal and almost mandatory that cooking and fashion (și 'X au talent' - aș adăuga eu) occupy most of the sections on culture and the "chefs" and "designers" and "dressmakers" are today the leading role that previously had scientists, composers and philosophers. Stoves and fireplaces and walkways are confused within the cultural coordinates of the time with books, concerts, operas and laboratories."
"For Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, the cultivation of the body was simultaneous and complementary to the cultivation of the spirit, it was believed that both are mutually enriched. The difference with our times is that now, generally, the practice of sports is made at the expense and instead of intellectual work. [...] the big football games serve mainly as a Roman circus, an excuse and relief of the irrational, regression of the individual to the condition of the tribe, gregarious piece, which, protected in the warm and impersonal anonymity of the grandstand, gives vent to his aggressive instincts of rejection of the other, symbolic of conquest and annihilation of the adversary.""Today the massive consumption of drugs responds to a cultural environment that drives men and women in search of quick and easy pleasure, that immunize against worry and responsibility, encounter with oneself through reflection and introspection, eminently intellectual activities that repel frivolous culture, because they are considered boring. It is to escape the emptiness and anguish caused to feel free and obliged to make decisions like what to do with himself in the world around us, especially if it faces challenges and dramas- feelings which poke that need to distraction - the engine of civilization in which we live."
"Today, the intellectual has disappeared from public debate. True, some of them still manifest sign, send letters to newspapers and become embroiled in controversy, but none of that has serious impact on the progress of society, whose economic, institutional and even cultural power are decided by political and and so-called administrative powers, including the intellectuals only conspicuous by their absence. Aware of the awkward situation they have been reduced by the society in which they live, most intellectuals have opted for discretion or failure in the public debate.""However, the positive counterpart of this sexual emancipation was also the trivialization of sex, which, for many, especially younger generations, has become a sport or hobby, a task shared no more important and perhaps less, gymnastics, dance or football. The light sex is sex without love and imagination, purely instinctive and animal sex. Vented a biological necessity and not a sensitive experience which enriches life emotionally, the couple's relationship beyond the carnal brawl, instead of releasing the man or woman from loneliness, after the peremptory act of physical love the fleeting follows, which returns them with an inevitable sense of failure and frustration. Eroticism has disappeared. Why? Because eroticism, making sex into a work of art, a ritual that literature, art, music and images permeate refined sensibility and high aesthetic virtuosity, is inconsistent, the very negation of that easy sex , expeditious and promiscuous [...]"
"Because one of the consequences of making the entertainment and fun in the supreme value of an era is that in the field of information, gradually it will also produce a hidden disorder of priorities: the news become important or secondary on everything, and sometimes only, not for its economic significance, political, cultural and social as it is new, surprising, unusual, outrageous and spectacular. Turning information into an instrument of fun is slowly opening the doors to confer legitimacy and respectability to what, before, took refuge in a marginal and almost clandestine journalism: scandal, disloyalty, gossip, violation of the privacy, if not-in the worst cases, to libel, slander, and to lie."
"This is a reality rooted in our time, the birth of new generations, a way of being, of living and perhaps also to die in the world in which we, we, the fortunate citizens of those countries to which the democracy, freedom, ideas, values, books, art and literature of the West have brought us the privilege of making the passenger entertainment in the highest aspiration of human life and the right look with cynicism and disdain all that bored, worried and reminds us that life is not only fun, but drama too, pain, mystery and frustration."
Multă înÈ›elepciune îmi È™i vă doresc!
