An American education expert said a few months ago that a good education no longer requires the study of foreign languages, since artificial intelligence is already capable of instant translations, and that time can be put to better use in other subjects. A good command of English is sufficient, he concluded. What can we say? Much has been said about the effects of language study on intelligence; Napoleão Mendes de Almeida, in his unsurpassed Latin Grammar, argues in favor of Latin. For someone whose mother tongue is English, however, there may be nothing more relevant to his intellectual development than to learn, desesperately, as early as possible, a syntactically more complex language—even Spanish will suffice. But how to convince the expert? If he does not realize it immediately, perhaps there is no solution. His perspective must be reversed: the man of the future, the more advantages he enjoys, the more he will have to strive not to squander abilities that only focused effort can develop.
Category: Notes
Largely Due to This Digital Culture…
Largely due to this digital culture, smart devices, information that is increasingly instantaneous and simplified, and the ubiquity of countless screens all at once, difficulties with concentration have become extremely common. The problem arises, naturally, because the modern man has less and less need to think. When the need arises, there are ways to delegate the thinking. The result is that one lives in a somewhat ethereal, unfocused state, and a multitude of impulses detrimental to concentration develop. Due to lack of practice, this ability is lost. How, then, can it be restored? As simple as the preceding diagnosis, it can be answered in a single word: by practicing it. And how? Well, through any activity that demands it, that isolates one from the environment, that is absorbing. Reading, for example; provided it arouses great interest, enough to override the distracting impulses. But to truly overcome the problem, to reacclimate the mind to the act of centering itself, to that ekagrata or one-pointedness of which the Indians speak, there may be no better solution than the old-fashioned meditation associated with the valuable and painstaking study of Latin.
The Sense of Humor Reveals One’s Life…
The sense of humor reveals one’s life experience. And few personality traits are as revealing as this one. Someone accustomed to the factory floor, for example, does not need much to shock someone else, raised in the mold of the European elite. And the latter, if he makes a joke, will either not be understood by the former, or it will seem to him ridiculously childish. So it goes. But it is difficult, for someone who understands both, to classify one’s humor as better than the other’s. What is not difficult is to perceive, with just a little conversation, the life experiences that have shaped the person with whom one is speaking.
It Is Not Uncommon to Encounter Authors…
It is not uncommon to encounter authors who, after advancing in their studies and literary careers, renounce their former mentors. And if this is true of mentors, it is even more common for them to renounce authors they once admired, who contributed to their intellectual development. On the one hand, intellectual evolution involves significant shifts in thought, and there are times when the change occurs in the mentor himself, who becomes different from who he once was. However, it is an extremely difficult task to repudiate without simultaneously sweeping away the feeling of gratitude. It may seem to the philosopher, after reaching lofty heights, a shame to have benefited, as a young man, from a journalist, an economist, or some figure from the so-called intellectual lower ranks. What utter nonsense! It is far more honorable, from up there, to remember the unique path that allowed him to ascend.