What best characterizes modernity is the revenge of the common man on the man of genius. In all spheres, it is his interests that predominate; wherever one turns one’s eyes, it is his face that stands out. The victory is complete. And precisely from this stems the suffocation of culture and high aspirations, which now find an almost invincible hostility to germinate. The common man does not tolerate them, and knocks on doors as a missionary in order to indoctrinate. Perhaps never has it been so difficult and so necessary an effort to ignore him and not allow oneself to be contaminated.
Tag: behavior
There Is an Insurmountable Distance…
There is an insurmountable distance between the misanthrope and his time that reveals itself with each attempt to approach it. The misanthrope who opens a contemporary novel will hardly be able to finish it, since he will gradually be overcome by a feeling of repulsion that will force him to throw it away, if he does not want to submit himself to a torture from which he has nothing to gain. Whose fault is this? Certainly not the novelist’s, who more often than not is only fulfilling part of his obligation to the future by describing minutiae and particularities. But there is no solution! His work, at every step, at every scene, will arouse bad feelings that will eventually suffocate the unadapted animal, and he will have to abandon it, if possible forget it. The misanthrope is someone out of place in space and time.
Early Adulthood
Early adulthood is a critical phase because the young man is pressured to make decisions with long-lasting consequences without having made up his mind firmly enough, or, in some cases, without having the personality to take charge of the decisions made. Added to this is the frequent case of financial dependence, which ends up leading to submission to advice and opinions. Thus, he almost always gives in to the supposed “wisdom of the elders”, when in truth this is only useful to him as long as it is in conformity with what he truly wants for himself. Otherwise, such advice will only be the push into the abyss that will cause him the most severe regret he has ever experienced—regret, however, necessary for him to mature, and realize that only a life in which the consequences suffered are the fruit of personal choices is worth living. The amusing thing, in short, is that in most cases a few more years would be enough for decisions to be made in a more sensible way; but no, for some reason they have to be made hastily, perhaps because the mistake itself is fundamental.
It Is Notorious That the So-Called…
It is notorious that the so-called temperamental predispositions are almost always anchored in experience, thus removing much of the meaning they seem to suggest. Much of what psychology says about environmental conditioning and its long-term impacts is definitely true, and it is indisputable that the environment interferes and shapes, its effect being proportional to the exposure time and intensity of the contact. Thus, whether we like it or not, we carry something with us from it, and precisely for this reason, distancing ourselves from it is fundamental in case this something inclines to the undesirable. Blocking oneself and creating psychological barriers to avoid its influence is possible and, in extreme cases, indispensable; but an experience, even if it bears fruit, cannot, no matter how much one may wish, simply be erased.