Arquivo de philosophy | Page 106 of 123

The American Bush and the Brazilian Bush

I do not deny it: reading Thoreau, I have convinced myself that my place is in the bush. And the temptation to drop everything and go into the jungle was strong. But I remembered reading the huge Gilberto Freyre as well. And what a difference to the American bush and the Brazilian bush! Two years in the jungle, bathing in the river, and Thoreau is not bitten even once by a venomous species, his plantation is not plagued by pests, he does not suffer from mosquito or ant infestation… So the bush really looks like peace. I ask: how many would dare to walk in closed woods, at midnight, without a flashlight, to replicate Thoreau in Brazilian soil? Perhaps I am a coward… In any case, I will remain thirsty for my bush, even if its configuration deeply embarrasses the philosopher…

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The Absence of a More Noble Conception

I think of the major of 20th-century literature. The human being is a multifaceted, ambiguous animal, subject to diverse and contradictory manifestations. In him, the savage mixes with the sublime in a variable—and generally unbalanced—proportions. An author, therefore, is not wrong when he portrays him as a slave of desire, a puppet of the will. And he gets it right when he explores irrationality and immorality. However, a pause. There is in man the manifestation of the beautiful, and amputated is the work that fails to explore it. To give life to the most archaic and animalistic human specimen is a task, let us say, less difficult than to dare to penetrate the mind of the model that rises above the banal. Therefore, the author will be smaller if he escapes from the task of conceiving the rare. Where is the noble? Non-existent? That is what seems to say the literature that is incapable of generating it even though, like Swift, in the form of horses…

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An Unsuitable Animal [2]

Forced to wait in a line, with nothing to read, I enjoy the moment in a fun activity: trying to list the things I hate most. Here we go: (1) dissimulation, (2) bureaucracy, (3) demagoguery, (4) groups of people, (5) marketing, (6) expansiveness, (7) noise of human voices, (8) futile conversation… I list and have an idea. The smile is immediate. Again, I perceive myself as an unsuitable animal. I consider, perhaps, that my existence is an evolutionist enigma. I have countless contrary manifestations to the environment, so I risk my nature to be the portrait of maladjustment. In me, the intro and the extra are related in hostility, they repel each other without any possible conciliation. I deliberately refuse to integrate the medium, even if I fail and it unbearably persecutes me. I remember the words of Thoreau: “Wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society”. Oh, annoying life! Unbearable conventions! Stupid talk!… Goodbye, note, even you cause me anger.

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It Is Amazing How the Need for Money Makes Existence Worse

It is amazing how the need for money makes existence worse. Forced, most take it for natural, but the truth is they are slaves without knowing it. Naturally, some do not share the same fate. And what weight they do not carry on their backs! Knowing one’s need for money leads to endless psychological torture. “For how long? When will I free myself?” And worse when neediness takes over the bulk of routine, which is the most common situation. Many do not understand, anesthetized. But living up to a contract, having obligations to honor, doing religiously what one would never do if he did not has to… is that, by any chance, life?

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