Luciano Duarte | Literature and philosophy

The Evolved Conscience Has to Behave as a Company

It is curious to note the movement of mass psychology. Beyond the utilitarian notion of value, now the evolved consciousness has to behave as a company, that is, not only to accept them gladly but also to long for feedbacks. Listen, O soul, ask for them and thank them, always! And the relationships—all of them!—have a commercial character. That is to say: the human being comes into existence for “customer satisfaction”. With a smile stretched out on his face, he shows maturity when he strives to please. Always the others, always the extra, always the group as sovereign criteria of validation of one’s own acts. And the “common sense” forcing the universality of submission. Oh, species! whose remnants of dignity seem subordinate to a voluntary migration of individuals back to the forest…

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The Provincial Letters, by Blaise Pascal

The courageous retaliation of a man to the tyranny of his time; the confirmation of a moving biography; the manifesto of one of the most brilliant minds of all times. How can one read and not get emotional, not be taken by revolt? The sincerity with which Pascal expresses himself reveals all the nobility of his character. Insubmission to the court of men, daring to resist at a disadvantage, courage to put everything to lose: to read The Provincial Letters is to verify the highest manifestation of dignity in the human spirit, is to allow oneself to be in contact with a noble, limpid and eternal soul.

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An Anti-Marketing Attitude

If virtue usually manifests itself in abstention, in the negative, in the annulment of natural dispositions, and if its aspect is generally rough, cold, and intransigent, one must conclude that it demands an active posture in favor of the depreciation of one’s own image, that is, an essentially anti-marketing attitude—on a personal level, it is true, but is it still possible to divide it?

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The Unique and Its Property, by Max Stirner

Brilliant work. Manifesto in favor of intelligence and dignity. Antidote against the tyranny of abstractions. What a pleasure! And there were those who wanted to paint Stirner pejoratively as “radical”. Well done! Radical against the submission of the individual to ideas, revolt against the repression of thought. And, moreover, very good-humored, which is not verified in all those who were indignant against the blasphemies of this great intellectual. The human being suffers from this terrible need to first associate, become part of a group, formulate and validate beliefs through consensus, and then impose them on the rest of the species, claiming universal validation. It is natural that the individual has always existed, in common sense, as submissive to any authority. The opposite is simply unthinkable! One must be a sheep and demand that all others be so too; so I think, so I do, and that is exactly how everyone must think and do! But there is what the flock animals will never understand: dignity begins with the consciousness of individuality and maturity with the acceptance of the world as it is. The species has already failed, but the laughter of Stirner will continue to echo through the centuries…

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