Masochismo

Riporto questo link a un commento di Aurelio Picca su Pasolini: http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/ora-basta-santificazioni-pasolini-resta-lupo.html. Nonostante il "Giornale" non sia certo la sede pià propensa verso i gay, sono sostanzialmente d'accordo con lui. E' ben noto che moltissimi gay muoiono uccisi dai loro amanti prezzolati o meno - il primo forse fu Giulio Cesare - e temo che a Pasolini sia successo questo. Per contro, il presunto masochismo non significa che "se la sia cercata" come sembra intendere Picca. Ci sono fior di masochisti - soprattutto etero - che muoiono anziani e serenamente. E tra l'altro non ne sono neanche sicuro - la morte di cui parla Picca è la croce cristiana, mentre quella di Salò è la pulsione di annientamentodel fascismo - tra l'altro resa come da nessun altro - e la metafora non è più disgustosa del suo oggetto.

Informatic Middle Age

Are we entering the informatic middle age? In 1971 Giorgio Vacca, a member of the Club of Rome and an engineer that involved in the first, pionieristic attempts at computer modeling of complex itnerrelationship when computer power was ridiculously small – published “The Forthcoming Middle Age”. In this book he says that the systems we have build and on which depend the life of people will become so complex that we will lose the ability to understand and manage them. I remember this old book when I browse the web, and I find a sort of new religion, intolerant exactly like the Christianity of IV-V century a.C., when I see that books or at least reading are disappearing, like at the fall of the Roman Empire, and even when I see that in many branches of science the rigorous logical-mathematical way of thinking that was developed by scientists like Euclid or Archimedes is replaced by simple, intuitite thinking based on computer modeling. And also the economic system seems to be in deep crisis; true, BRICS and many other developing countries are growing exponentially, yet this growth is driven by the difference of costs between developed and developing countries, and it is difficult that it will last more than 20-30 years.


Middle Age lasted 1000 years. The Reinessance was largely a rediscovery of the wisdom and techniques of the ancients, but this rediscovery gave new life to the undoubtedly innovative ideas of Christianity. For instance, the idea of equality was substantially alien to the Ancient, that could not put on the same plane an aristocrat, a plebeian, or a slave, and was introduced into the estern Civilization by Christianism, and yet it became a leading idea only in XVIII century, almost two thousaad years after the “Tale of the Mountain”. We are entering in an era of regression, must we await after 1000 years a Reinessance where the power of informatic turns from regressive to progressive?

History of art

Philippe Daverio, the art.., says that the traditional classification into periods dates to XIX century, when modern art was Raphael and contemporary art was Hayek, and that it has do be deeply rethinked. To my knowledge, he has not put down explicitly a new periodization, but, from sparse hints, it seems to be 1300-1700 (From van Eyck and Giotto to Poussin), 1800-about 1920 (from Ingres and David to Picasso, Kandinskij and the other historical vanguards), and 1920-today (from Duchamp onwards). If I don’t mistake the ideas of Daverio, it seems very sensible. The art of XX century, in fact, is very different before and after World War II, and Picasso and Hirst have probably very little in common.

This periodization of the history of art suggests a parallel segmentation of the history of Man. The end of the Midle Age is traditionally dated at the end of XV century, after the discovery of Americas by Columbus. This dating is understandable, but it expresses the timing of a radical change of perspective, economy and society from the point of view of France. Yet, the same change had occurred two centuries earlier in Italy. Montaigne is often considered the beginner of the modernity, but the subjective perspective of the Essais is already perfectly mature in Petrarca. Thus, modernity begins in the XIV century in Italy and in part in the Flandres, and then spreads slowly to Europe, attaining a turning point with the rise of national states and the beginning of colonialism. And it ends in the XX century, with the rise of mass society – this is the surprising idea of Daverio. This pre-dated passage from modernity to post-modernity is related to the astounding rush of technological innovations, the expansion of the middle classes, World War I, the end of colonialism, and Russian Revolution.

Renzo Rubino

Renzo Rubino si presenta al concerto del 1° maggio (quest’anno con pochissimo sociale e diversi gay) con la maglietta della Gioconda – simbolo di androginia – e sparpaglia citazioni più o meno sottili qua e là. Giochini da studente, furbizia o vero talento? In ogni caso mi colpiscono le spalle larghissime da lottatore.

Fascism and rationalism

Fascist architecture and rationalist architecture look alike - they developed after all more or less in the same years. Anyway this resemblance is very superficial. In fact the architecture of Le Corbuser, Gropius, Mies van der Rohe is rational not or not only because it employs simple shapes with no decoration - parallelepipeds, cubes - but above all because it is functional  - buildings should be "machines for living".

But fascists building are all but machines for living. They must impress and terrify, not be friendly. Huge staircaases, disproportionate volumes, a tendence to be higher than large. The style is the same - blocks, rows of frameless windows - but the meaning is opposite.

Of course, this doesn't mean that a few examples fo this architecture can be aesthetically pleasnt - for instance the "Palazzo della civiltà del lavoro" that is discussed in another post (http://castorphans.blogspot.it/2011/03/colosseo-quadrato.html) or the astounding "Casa del Fascio" in Como.

Trotzkismo eterno

Se ci sono tre partiti, A B C, ognuno con circa un terzo dei seggi in parlamento, e il partito C detesta A e B ed esclude di allearsi con uno dei due, cosa succederà? Che A e B si alleeranno contro C. A quel punto, se non è in grado di far sciogliere il parlamento e andare a nuove elezioni, inutile che C frigni. Gli avversari vanno divisi, non fatti coalizzare, ma questo chiaramente presuppone che uno abbia veramente voglia di lottare e non di fare la bella statuina.

Napolitano bis

Grillo ha fatto finta di essere contro l"'inciucio", ma in realtà auspicava esattamente questo. Alle prossime elezioni ci sarà un'emorragia di voti dal PD a 5stelle. Le conseguenze per la vita delle persone (soprattutto dei suoi elettori) che deriveranno da questa intesa non gli interressano. Certo, è stato abilissimo, cosa che non si può dire del PD.

Fall

The authors of II century d.C., observing the rise of Christian religion, considered this faith as a "superstition", an were puzzled by the strange beliefs of christians, that challenged the humanism and the rationalism of their civilization. They were unaware that the Roman Empire would fall in a couple of centuries and that the absurd doctrine will become the indubitable religion for every European. I ponder over these old stories when I browse the web. There you find a large variety of things, but the dominant ones are political conspiracy, UFO, alternative economic theories, crop circles and so on. They appear as something absurd and illogical to the people that received a traditional education based on books (like me), but they seem to establish a coherent doctrine, based more on faith that on rational reasoning - not differently from the early Christina religion. In the Reinessance a synthesis between the humanism of the ancients and christian religion was realized . But this happened 1000 year after the collapse ot the ancient civilization.

Habemus papam

The episode of the dream of Pope Innoncence III - the subject of one of the frescos in the Church of the Saint in Assisi - is well known. The pope dreamed that the Lateran - the official residence of the Bishop of Rome - was ruining and that Francesco sustained it. The reference to this history is obvious in the choice of the name of the new pope, considering that the recent case sof pedophile priests that, remarkably, scandalised in particular the USA catholics. The scandal is probably not unrelated with the abidcation of Ratzinger.

Many sites in the web underscore the ambiguous relationship of Bregoglio with the dictatorship in Argentina, other the conservatism with respect to gay rights; other emphasize the choice of poverty and the care for social problems. In other words, nobody knowns if he is progressive or conservative - not surprisingly. he is a Jesuit.

Italia giusta

Lo slogan di Bersani era "l'Italia giusta". Purtroppo è un ossimoro.

Fecerunt desertum

If you travel inner Sicily or Spain you will find a barren landscape, with sparse or no trees and extensive grasslands. This is ovioulsy related to low rainfall, but this landscape is by no means a natural one; it was originated by overexploitation of the soils for crop harvesting at the time of the Romans. The impoverished soils became unproductive, and were ledt abandoned or destinated to sheep grazing. This is perhaps the most striking heritage of the Roma Empire, much more, possibly, than the imposing ruins of temples and theaters.

And our own civilization probably will leave a simila footprint: the towns and skyscrapers will become sparse heaps of rubbles, but the irreversibly collapsed ecosystem - for instance the desertified rainforests - will remain forever.

Comici

In fondo le elezioni le hanno vinte due comici.

Lucio Dalla

In fondo come cantautore non era un granché. Però un mio amico innamorato del jazz lo venera, e infatti se lo si vede come jazzista, era un grandissimo.

Disaster

In many ways we must thank Frau Merkel for the disaster of the recent elections in Italy. A yer ago, the left would have won the election easily and definitively, but the leaders of the left feared to receive the same treatment as Greece, where the socialist denounced the huge budget hole left by the previous right governemnt, and were left collapse by the EU authorities.

Work ethic

I was reading the interesting post about working in academia (http://evol-eco.blogspot.it/2013/02/academic-ambivalence-why-do-we-want-to.html) that plainted that positions are few, and work is very hard, almost masochistic. But this is not a problem of Academia, it is a problem of America. It was highlighted by Max Weber: ascetic protestantism, the belief that hard work will give yout Heaven, is deeply embodied in the anglo-saxon variety of capitalism. It is a religious belief, it has nothing to do with economic efficiency; in fact Germany has a higher pro-capita productivity than America, notwithstanding the fact that in Germany workers work less and the atmosphere is much more relaxed.