Luciano Duarte | Literature and philosophy

More Lines About Love…

What is called “love” necessarily requires an active attitude of the beloved. This to me is so obvious that sometimes I wonder where the forgery is: if in the word, in the concept, or if precisely this generation subverted the feeling that for centuries was called “love”. Modern love, above all, presents itself as a necessity, a desire of being the target of an effort of others, to feel valuable, accompanied, stroked by someone who undertakes to please. If the beloved takes his apathy, then “love” fades. Petty this non-literary love, whose suppression — whether by distance or disruption — hurts only by the finding of the lack of pleasures (effect) generated by the active attitude of the beloved… I know, I know… I am exaggerating, but as I said: in my sparse and brief experience, I have never seen a lover who loved a tree, nor a a stone…

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Love: Highlight of Selfishness

In my limited and brief experience, I have never seen anything that came close to the selfless conception of love. On the contrary, the examples that life tried to provide me have always enhanced love as a highlight of selfishness. Moreover, I easily identify love when I see it converted into hatred, in a very natural process, when pride, wounded, dispenses with the scruples and shows up in greatest vigour.

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Freedom or Slavery?

It is Monday. The guy wakes up early, and he is headed for work, where he spends the day. He turns home, exhausted, where he have a few hours left before bed. The next day, he repeats the routine, and then and then, waiting at the end of the month a salary. Weekends: if the money is plentiful — or lacks, — it is time to employ it to get some pleasure. One, two, twenty years passes, and the guy remains in the routine, already eager for the day when the state will pay him the monthly costs. I ask: freedom, if in homeopathic doses, would not be slavery? Or: not realizing being slave would not, in essence, be a brain pathology? Anyway, I recognize: it is better that everything stays as it is, either because of the calmness of the routine or the scarcity of antidepressants in the market.

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Inaccuracy of Biblical Texts

There is an extremely irritating argument in the rebuttal of biblical texts: precariousness in the process of reconstruction and transmission of ancient texts. Well, if we consider that the methods of transmission were precarious to the point of compromising the authenticity of what was written — and we have minimal coherence, — then we will have to throw in the trash all that was produced in antiquity; soon, we will be proclaiming the falsehood of, to cite a single example, all the work of Aristotle. I believe it is absurd to believe in the falsehood of what has been written and passed on in the light of thousands of witnesses over time, in absolute focus of attention: to this end, it will be necessary to believe in the joint action of many men of different generations in favor of forgery . This, to me, is a cowardly offense to the honorable initiative of so many over the centuries in order to preserve human knowledge; if we proceed in this way, we will end up strictly considering invalid the entire cultural production other than that of modernity.

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