China

As can be see from the end. this is not a lecture on China, but on the West, and an appeql to hombleness for our arrogant civilisation. Anyway, it suggests a few reflections about my beloved China.

1) American long for a China split into many medium-sized states instead than a huge empire challenging the supremacy of USA. They therefore support the idea that China is not a nation, that chinese is not a unitary language, etc. Anyway, Jaques has some reason to think that China is not a nation in the sens of western nations. Bit this has historical reasons: the national states arose in the Reneissance, but the Reinessance was possible only because the Roman Empire collapsed, and China had not a Reinessance, precisely because the Chinese Empire never collapsed, but slowly evolved into a super-advanced civilisation without ever leaving the Middle Age.

2) Jacques stresses the fundamental point that Chinese see the state as the head of the family. This is a brilliant idea of Confucius: he managed to unite the chinese, simply by stating that China is a single, big family. Western states are not based on familial ties, but on the social contract.

3) Finally, I would like to underscore that the writing system is very different from the alphabet, and this leads to a different way of reasoning: Westerns think is linearly, whereas Chineses think in a ntework - not differently from Jesuits, who in fact had a high esteem of the Chinese people.

Jacques is right in saying that we are ignoran about China. We should ask Chinese to present themselves, abyway, not clever and expert British.

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.

Gesuiti euclidei

E’ noto come, nel ‘600, il padre gesuita Matteo Ricci, partito come missionario in Cina, tentò con successo di fondere il cristianesimo con il confucianesimo, creando un rito speciale che venne accolto con favore dall’imperatore e che prosperò per circa un secolo finché la Chiesa di Roma non decise che non era ortodosso. Per questo, Matteo Ricci fece gli stessi studi di un mandarino, arrivando a padroneggianre i classici e la calligrafia, e a vestirsi alla cinese, in modo da essere accettato dalla corte imperiale e soprattutto di trovare i punti di contatto tra la millenaria cultura cinese e il cristianesimo, compito non facile; in cinese per esempio non esiste il termine “dio”, e Matteo Ricci dovette tradurrlo con la parola cinese per “cielo”. Insomma, pur di evangelizzare i cinesi si sinizzò completamente. Ma nulla mi toglie dalla mente il sospetto che - a parte gli obblighi per così dire di servizio - Matteo Ricci abbia voluto diventare cinese per intima consonanza con un popolo, da tanti punti di vista, gesuitico. Cosa c’è di più gesuitico del concetto di Deng Xiao Ping di “economia socialista di mercato”?