Some biographies generate in us moderns an effect similar to the one we experience when, after getting bored with some trifle or complaining about life, we meet a homeless person. Because, in fact, some of the most famous names in universal literature have been beggars themselves—famous, by the way, not because of their material condition, but because of the greatness of their works. And then we discover how incapable we have become of enduring misery, since little things bother us a lot, and a fraction of the adversity endured by so many of our ancestors would be enough to wipe us out. At least the embarrassing is useful.
Tag: history
It Is Somewhat Curious That There Is a Veiled…
It is somewhat curious that there is a veiled homogeneity in the idea of historical evolution in the modern West, when there is enormous accessibility to established historians whose works dismantle this very idea. In other words: the subject proclaims what he has discovered very well documented in a reliable source, sometimes in a publication that was published more than half a century ago, and is still regarded as crazy, as an enemy and as a criminal. For some reason, the veiled consensus wants to remain immune to certain works. But it should be noted that, at least since Hegel, being a historian has, to a large extent, also become being iconoclastic.
Sometimes I am Curious to look…
Sometimes I am curious to look at the curriculum of an architecture course, to try to understand how this absolute, indisputable and blatant regression in the results provided by the evolution of architectural technique was possible. The obsession with low cost does not seem to be enough to justify it, since even in European cities there are none where the modern part is visually superior to the old part. In short, modern architecture is uglier and less creative. What is this, then, that is being taught so that the professional, with better resources, produces something expressly worse?
There Are No Words to Describe the Feeling…
There are no words to describe the feeling we experience when, appreciating the peace that emanates from a Hindu text, we remember the barbarities described by Oliveira Martins committed on Indian soil. It is astonishing. To imagine the Portuguese, precisely in this land where peace is sacred, arriving like demons, robbing and ravaging, setting fires, stealing, murdering and subjugating. And, even in the less violent landings, corrupting by the unbridled exercise of the grossest vices, of the most radical materialism. The thought of Indian cities being transformed into the receptacle of those astonishing perversions, the destination of the greatest earthly ambitions, the paradise of depravity… it is best not to continue.