Health and Serenity of Soul

In Living to our Fullest Potential we wrote about Dario Bernazza’s list of the 30 major issues which – he argues - we must necessarily face (and solve) in the best possible way in order to diminish life sufferings and live a fruitful life. After no. 1 in his list (Defining a purpose in life) we will here consider no. 2 and no. 3, namely:

2. Keeping ourselves in good health
3. Serenity of soul

(Above a so-called Seneca, a Roman bronze at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, Italy. Picture by Massimo Finizio, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Italy. Here the Wikimedia source file)

Good health

According to Bernazza (I am summarizing his thought freely) health is more precious than wealth or power. It is a prerequisite for a fruitful and happy life. “It is the condition without which the edifice of happiness cannot be built or, if it is already in place, its falling apart cannot be avoided”. Better to be an unknown man who is in good health, than being a successful man who is sick. Good health is a way of delaying old age and fighting back death.

We should abstain ourselves from intemperance and dissolute living, because the pleasure of wellbeing is by far greater than that of revels (of any kind) that will later make us sick and will endanger our health. Bernazza condones a few exceptions (like - it is my thought - our civilization always did: from Roman Saturnalia to modern Carnivals), so here we can quote – since Bernazza doesn’t – the Roman poet Horace who teaches to “mingle a little folly with your wisdom: a little nonsense now and then is pleasant.”

Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem:
Dulce est desipere in loco.

(Horace: 4 Odes, xii. 28.)

(I do not know who translated Horace’s verses into English. Now and then makes good rhythm and is fine to me as a concept, though probably it is not a good translation of in loco, which should be “at a proper time”).

As a conclusion, a minimum advice from Bernazza on how to keep our good health: a walk at a good pace of 2-3 km every day in a park or green area.

Serenity of soul

Attaining serenity of soul is an effective weapon against life liabilities, namely all the sufferings that life inflicts upon us without mercy. But how can we attain it? We first have to understand something about life sufferings. Physical sufferings can be diminished if we take care of our health, as we said before – argues Country Philosopher (this is how we like to call Dario Bernazza). As regards psychical sufferings, some originate from the consequences of our bad choices, others from events we do not have control over, like the death of someone we love, for example, or people’s bad actions.

As regards both physical and psychical sufferings, learning how to control nervous overexcitability can be of enormous benefit - argues CP – and especially its negative side, which is anger (the positive side of overexcitability being joy). The less we get angry (and generally overemotional, in a negative sense), the less we suffer. The more we get angry (and overemotional), the more we suffer.

Is it possible to always avoid anger and nervous overexcitement? Only the strictest stoics and the strictest oriental religious gurus think it possible – argues CP. But that would mean to have the psyche of a corpse, which is not possible, unless we really are a corpse. What we can do is limiting our nervous overexcitement to such an extent that real negative overexcitement is not possible any more. “This means reaching a status of psychic calmness more or less unalterable, thence a substantial serenity of soul.” It is an immense, invaluable benefit, it is clear – argues CP – because in this way we can highly diminish psychic sufferings which are the sufferings that mostly plague our life.

“But how can we possibly attain this? Socrates - argues Bernazza - teaches us how: through exercise, because exercise creates a habit, any habit. And how long must this exercise last? Until the day we really get into the habit of not getting angry and overemotional any more. It is a long exercise, it is not an easy one and it cannot but last some years.” But, even if we fail and get now and then overemotional let us remember never to give up, this being highly important, since perseverance will certainly allow us to attain our positive result. There is no doubt about it, there is really no doubt (I told you CP always repeats this phrase).

PS
Here is a list of our writings on Dario Bernazza:

Country Philosopher
Ethical Confusion & Ancient Teachings
Assets and Liabilities in Life
Living to Our Fullest Potential
Health and Serenity of Soul

And here a post on anger (a bit on the wild-soliloquy side, I’ll admit):
Force & Anger. Ghosts in the Mind

Rome. Stepmother or Alma Mater?

A few observations on Rome by Italian sociologist Franco Ferrarotti regarding the period from the Italian unity - when Rome became the capital of our country in 1870 - until today. They appeared in two interviews published in Milan’s Corriere della Sera and Rome’s Messaggero between 2005 and 2006, in a period when the Paris banlieu exploded with riots.

Sociologist Ferrarotti (Corriere della Sera, April 2, 2006) observed that Rome always found some difficulty being loved by Italians since she has been a double capital, of Italy and of the Catholic Church. Italians - says Ferrarotti – felt that Rome was too universal. Rome, in short, gli starebbe larga, was too large for them. According to Ferrarotti, only provincial aesthetes like Fellini and Pasolini loved her. Ferrarotti published Roma da capitale a periferia 40 years ago (Bari, Laterza 1970), a book describing a suburban anti-Rome, so different from the celebrated historical centre. Today, thanks to years of good administration - says Ferrarotti – Roman suburbs have progressed. Rome, from suburbia, is becoming a real capital and a famous actor like “Michele Placido is today on stage in Tor Bella Monaca, a very peripheral borgata (= a working class suburb).”

According to Ferrarotti there are no explosive suburbs in Rome such as those in Paris because immigration is recent here. Maybe in 15 years Roman immigrants’ children and grand-children will protest for their rights.

Rome as a capital, believes Ferrarotti, is more Mediterranean than European, due to both her nature and mediation capabilities. However she is also a religious capital like Mecca or Jerusalem, which makes her something far beyond Europe (observation quoted in our first post, a sort of introduction to this web blog). The problem has always been urban planning management although today the old alliance among real estate business, finance and political power is broken thanks to increasing democracy. There is a tendency towards polycentrism, which is good, so the city can breathe.

Rome is not matrigna (stepmother) anymore, as Ferrarotti called her in 1991. Today, he argues, she has become alma mater (Latin for nourishing mother), even though at times she is also lupa (she-wolf) with her children. Zones once desolate like Quarticciolo and Alessandrino are now urban zones. “Instead of progressively rotting suburbs, in two generations we have had social auto-promotion: unlike other metropolises no favelas developed here ”.

On november 2005 an article appeared in Rome’s daily Il Messaggero.

Professor Ferrarotti, do you think Prodi is right? Will Italian suburbs be on fire as they are in France?
“No, Italian suburbs have nothing in common with Parisian banlieue.”

What’s the difference?
“A third generation of immigrants - children and grand-children of the old pieds-noirs - lives in the Parisian banlieue and feels they are rightful French citizens. In schools though being francocentrism dominant, Maghrebine culture and roots are ignored, which alienates these youngsters from society. First-generation immigrants showed gratitude for France hosting them; both the second and third generation, on the other hand, seeing their fathers threatened by ostracism, transform this old gratitude into hate. It is a tragedy and no parallel can be drawn between the French and the Italian situation”.

Italian suburbs are then the best of possible worlds?
“I have written a book in 1970, Roma da Capitale a periferia (”Rome from Capital to Suburbia”). Today we would rather speak of Rome’s transformation from suburbia into a real capital. Slums have disappeared. In Alessandrina borgata 50 percent of the students are non-EU. They don’t have problems. Their teachers have problems, instead.”

Why, Professor?
“Because these non-EU kids’ parents earn more than Italian teachers who, though badly paid, must increase their efforts talking to a multiethnic audience. Therefore they lose any motivation. In politicians’ place I would rather worry for possible protests by underpaid teachers and young unemployed graduates. These are the new poverty-stricken in Italy that could give life to an explosive situation, not the immigrants.”

No imminent immigrants danger, then.
“No. Problems could maybe arise from CPTs (Centres of temporary permanence) created by the Turco Napolitano law (num. 40, 1998). If the CPTs became like concentration camps, yes, there could be some danger. But for now the situation in Italy doesn’t seem so serious. Nothing comparable to suburbs in Paris, Frankfurt, London.”

An excessive alarm, that from Prodi …
“Yes, it seems apocalyptic to me. Nevertheless his statements imply useful ideas. Prodi invites to think about a process of citizenship and integration of non-EU people in our country. I find this correct, and necessary. If a true immigrants integration process is set out in Italy the mine is defused before it can explode.”

About
Italian version

A Novel in the Hands of the Killers

Before getting to the killers let us be patient and consider the concept of literary improvisation. I know I am terribly boring but I promise a lot of blood blood blood in this post - plus the relationship between literature and social life being complex we’ll have to wander a bit before we finally dive into base butchery .

Literary improvisation is not far from musical improvisation, a topic we have talked about in a previous post. We will not define the concept, being it self-explanatory.

(Can James Joyce’s stream of consciousness be in some way related to what we have said above - literary improvisation, not base butchery, in case you don’t get it wrong ? Hard to say. I don’t believe it to be very far from it. It is to be noted though that writers at times cleverly build what seems spontaneous, and in literature what counts is the final result: things do work or they do not).

Connecting literary improvisation with digression we will mention again that nice passage by J. D. Salinger where Holden, the adolescent protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye, narrates how he had to undergo the oral expression lesson which consisted in letting a student speak of any topic, and each time the student didn’t stick to the point all the boys in class had to yell “Digression!!” at him (you can read this passage in a previous post of ours). Holden instead liked speeches full of digressions and the novel itself, if not very similar in its structure to the above said stream of consciousness, is nonetheless so rich with digressions, facts within facts, ideas within ideas, that it creates an overall effect of chaotic freshness memorably depicting an adolescent mind definitely undisciplined and even disturbed (Holden is disturbed in some way) although so vivacious and sparkling.

(Here again everything seems spontaneous and improvised but I am sure Salinger’s text resulted from a good mixture of intuition and clever construction).

Salinger’s novel has been a classic not only of the American literature (and his language is present in most dictionaries of US slang) but it has inspired the beat generation as well as numerous drop-outs who joined the utopian movements of the 1960s up to the present day.

Personally I read it by mere chance when I was 18 (I had it in inheritance from a boy who was leaving an apartment we shared in Ireland) and I was deeply impressed by it. Coming just out of adolescence I probably recognized in there plenty of the insecurities I was living in those days. But young Holden went beyond, to the extent of almost hating all the surrounding world and it was a bit worrying for people (like me), who enjoyed the book so much, to read on newspapers that David Chapman, the person “who assassinated John Lennon, was carrying the book when he was arrested immediately after the murder and referred to it in his statement to police shortly thereafter.” Also “John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate US President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was also reported to have been obsessed with the book.” (From Wikipedia: The Catcher in the Rye).

Well, that doesn’t mean that the novel is murder inspiring though certainly by effectively describing the difficulties of a tormented adolescence it is not illogical that some disturbed individual identified himself with the Holden character, finding comfort and inspiration in it and thus feeding his vision against everything and everybody (and refusing to stick to the point naturally becomes a symbol of anarchic revolt against order and self-discipline).

However, also the non psychopath teenager identified himself/herself with Salinger’s character. So the novel became a classic for an entire generation, whether protesting against order and law or not, since adolescence is a more or less difficult period for everyone.

There is, we repeat, a subtle link between digression and the previously mentioned themes of utopia & musical improvisation. Digression as well, going against rationality, can in fact lead to inconclusiveness, i.e. to nowhere, thus unstructuring the logic of discourse - utopia is a Greek word made of ‘ou’(= no) and ‘τόπος’ (= place), so its meaning is actually ‘in no place’.

Summarizing, improvisation is the thin link among the present post and these earlier ones, Digression vs Sticking to the Point and Why Musical Improvisation is Utopian.

Improvisation has been a myth of the counterculture of my generation and of the generations who followed. The idea of improvisation in art (music, literature, theatre etc.) is somewhat connected to social behaviours appeared in the counterculture of the last 50 years. A relationship, in fact, between mental and social anarchy cannot in my view be denied (like I guess it cannot be denied that there is some relationship between the crystalline clarity of Julius Caesar’s writings and his rational conduct and self-control, of which you can read something in this post of ours as well).

It is simple, after all. Facts (and history) are created by people. And people have a mind. Thence there are connections between what we think, read, write and do, whether in our social environment or in art.

(We are not anarchic and we do not belong to the counterculture - although for a couple of years we did, but that was a very long time ago. It can somehow be proven by the fact that we try to get inspiration from our ancient philosophies, which exalted wisdom, rationality and self control. Only ….

Things are not in black and white,
the hues of grey (and colours)
being infinite …

Forgive my silly English poems, it is one of my manias).

Italian version of this post