reflections Archivi - Keep Calm and Drink Coffee

AVANTI, PARLA – COME ON, TALK

Aug 18, 2021 | BOOKS

Come on, talk! About an order or a peremptory invitation?
Changing the pitch can be both.
What if the request comes from a longtime friend and the tone is simply curious?

As happened to me when reading Giulia Caminito‘s book, also in this case I found a completely unconventional way of writing, even if I have not been conquered in the same way.

When Porci con le ali – Winged pigs came out, Lidia Ravera‘s debut book, I was still reading Mickey Mouse but the echo of the sensation generated remained impressed on me, as well as the post-1968 wave that brought with it an epochal change.

This book brings back to those years, however, in a slow and alternating way, more like an undertow that laps slowly.

And slowly one realizes that the story was built specifically as a system on a very specific foundation: the base, the true fulcrum of the whole story.

If on the one hand I was curious to deepen a page of Italian history of which I have never read, but which I have lived through news stories, on the other I found myself questioning my way of thinking.

Is the constant effort on myself to eliminate judgments and prejudices really effective?

And again: would I have had the same point of view if I hadn’t found myself in front of a perfect “grandmother”?

How often have we said then that it is not enough to give birth to be mothers, but if life offered a second chance?

I firmly believe that children and young people teach us constantly, and that they are saving.

The food for thought also ranges from the controversial question of knowing how to forgive oneself, to the survival instinct.
From the intrinsic power of silence to the benefits of music.
From consistency to hypocrisy.

All this is a portion of what emerged from the conversations with Monica: this time too I owe this reading to her, just as I owe to her the enrichment on a human level that I was able to draw from it.

What do you think about it?
Do you prefer a book to reveal a story or a reflection?
Come on, talk …

IS THE FROG BOILING?

Mar 30, 2020 | CHRONICLE, ITALY, WORLD

In these days in which we are under the centrifuges of information shot at accelerated speed, we find ourselves thinking also about how many rights enshrined in our Constitution have been suspended by decrees with that initials so far unusual: DPCM.
Our Constitution actually does not provide for the declaration of the state of emergency, and simply refers to the Civil Protection Code, in fact this Code is referred to in the now infamous publication in the Official Journal of January 31.
Our constituent fathers did not consider appropriate to insert emergency clauses, considering that the eventual conferral of full powers to a specific body, or the legitimization of the limitation, or even the suspension of citizens’ rights, could have represented a danger in the event of possible risks of dictatorship.
Emergency is, by definition an unforeseen circumstance, a concept therefore that in fact refers to a critical moment, to a particular condition that requires immediate intervention.
Undoubtedly what we are experiencing is a series of completely incomparable events, and it would be appropriate to try to keep focused on the fixed points: that is, the certain data.
It costs just a few seconds to go and read from official sources.
What is real and correct, helps anyone to make their own reflections, in the shelter of the bass drum of some media that feed panic and consequent misplaced behaviors and, on the other hand, helps to answer the title question.
The boiling frog is Noam Chomsky’s infamous metaphorical principle that if
“Imagine a pot full of cold water in which a frog swims quietly.
The fire is lit under the pot, the water heats up slowly. Soon it becomes lukewarm. The frog finds it rather pleasant and continues to swim.
The temperature rises. Now the water is hot. A little more than the frog does not appreciate. It gets tired a little, but it does not get scared.
The frog finds it very unpleasant, but it is weakened, it does not have the strength to react. Then it endures and does nothing. Meanwhile, the temperature still rises, until the moment when the frog ends – simply – boiled dead.
If the same frog had been immersed directly in the water at 50° it would have given a strong paw and would have jumped out of the pot immediately.”
However, this pot has a further disturbing characteristic: its size. It involves the whole world.
But “Being boiled” also has a slang meaning, at least we can remedy that.

RED PILL OR BLUE PILL?

Mar 1, 2020 | WORLD, WORLD

We use to divide the generations: Millennials, Generation X, Boomers and so on; despite the common path, each one has a particular vision on different spans of time obviously marked by the events that characterized them.
Many of us perhaps had never had a concrete experience on certain types of emergencies, and the general test of panic, which we are witnessing in these days, certainly opens up various new scenarios or at least never seriously considered.
You hear and read everything and the opposite of everything and the questions burst like an uncontainable quantity of corn kernels exposed to heat.
Yet I observe, as always, correct me if I am wrong, that most people continue to lock matters up between the four corners of their garden. Behavior from which, for example, the race to flour and sugar in supermarkets. As if having a spare in your pantry could be enough to shut everything else outside the door.
Question: what can be the reason?
Is it really enough to wash hands?
And, beyond the specific, even in a context of normal routine, don’t you think that in general people prefer not to face reflections that could lead to uncomfortable or unwanted conclusions?
It is inevitable to remember the famous example of the free will Matrix format:

“You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.
You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
Remember, all I’m offering is the truth – nothing more.”

Among the countless interpretations and dissertations there is also the hypothesis that blue pill is the choice of the dogmatic, but I would like to remain at the most basic concept: how many would choose the red pill?